Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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91. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform his plans for the public procurement system, and to better align it with strategic goals and ethical considerations; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15893/25]

Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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I am a big believer in looking at how we use our public procurement system. When I was on Galway City Council, we ensured that there were ways to employ, through social clauses and so forth, people across Galway. There are so many real positives we can use through our public procurement system. Given everything that is going on in the world at the moment, I am of the view that they can be used very wisely. What plans does the Government have to align our procurement system better with strategic goals and ethical considerations?

Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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I thank Deputy Farrell. The programme for Government includes a commitment to review the public procurement process to make it more transparent and to encourage greater participation by SMEs and other entities the Deputy has just spoken about. Working towards this aim and in the interests of setting out the strategic direction of public procurement for the next five years, my Department is developing a first national public procurement strategy. Last week, I launched a public consultation, which is being run by the Office of Government Procurement, that will inform this strategy. The consultation is open for eight weeks – there are seven weeks left at this point – and I encourage SMEs and social enterprises to use this opportunity to help shape the public procurement system.

A key ambition of mine, as Minister of State in the Department, is to make public procurement more accessible for SMEs in the interests of making it easier for them to tender for Government business. That is why I am asking for their feedback through the survey and through workshops we will be running in different regions.

Ultimately, this consultation will inform our strategy, which we expect to be innovative, sustainable and transparent around public procurement that supports competition, ethics and value for money. Groundwork has already begun on this. In June 2024, my Department published a policy statement, Developing a New Public Procurement Strategy for Ireland. In September, in partnership with the European Commission, it ran a national strategic dialogue workshop on the use of green, socially responsible and innovative public procurement. The outcome of this dialogue was the publication of a roadmap towards the new national public procurement strategy.

In parallel with this, the EU Commission launched a programme of review of its procurement regime. That has now commenced, and my Department has been active in engaging and collaborating with counterparts in other member states on this. The Commission has signalled that a draft text will emerge in 2026. It is quite likely that this might happen while Ireland holds the EU Presidency.

Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire Stáit. I welcome the fact that the Government is having that consultation. It is welcome that we are all thinking more about this issue, whether in the context of SMEs, social enterprises, as the Minister of State outlined, councils and so on.

The EU has long been calling on member states to use the public procurement system in a more strategic way to support industrial policy objectives. Data collection oversight of our public procurement system is poor in comparison with EU peer standards. The data reports we tend to get from the Office of Government Procurement are generally two or three years out of date when they are published. If we are to better use our procurement system, the first step is to have better access to recent data in order that we can know what is happening. That must be interoperable with other public data registries. Our current system seems antiquated in that regard, particularly in comparison with the systems that obtain in other countries. I produced a Bill at the end of the previous Dáil which would begin to move us in this direction. Would the Minister of State be willing to work with me on that?

Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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I have not seen the Deputy’s Bill.

Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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That is okay.

Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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I am absolutely happy to look at it and to sit down with the Deputy to discuss it.

Data collection is a key issue of concern for me. I have tasked the Office of Government Procurement to look at how we can better collect those data. Looking right across the spectrum, from SMEs to social enterprises, it is important to consider how much is being tendered versus how much is actually used at the end of a project.

The Deputy referred to ethical sourcing. The Office of Government Procurement has, as she will be aware, a sourcing division that employs 127 staff. All of those staff have successfully undergone ethical procurement training, which the Deputy might be interested to hear. The Chartered Institute of Procurement Supply, CIPS, has awarded the Office of Government Procurement certification in ethical procurement. As part of that, it has received the Ethical Kitemark accreditation and is also included on the CIPS corporate ethical register, which is a really positive development.

Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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That is really good. I am delighted to hear the Minister of State talking about data collection. I did a survey a few years ago asking different public bodies about their use of social clauses. One body responded by saying that it paid the minimum wage. Obviously, that is not a social clause; it is the law. You have to do that.

I wish to flag another thing, which comes on the back of the Minister of State’s mention of ethical considerations. It is good that staff of the Office of Government Procurement have done that training because we can all do with extra training. The EU Commission has stated that there is nothing precluding member states and contracting authorities from including ethical considerations as a criterion for awarding contracts. A significant number of local authorities in this State have passed motions supporting ethical procurement policy. It is always really good when councils are looking at this as well. The response they keep getting from their respective chief executive officers, however, is that this would infringe upon the EU’s procurement directions. When the statements of the EU Commission are presented to them, they maintain this position even though it flies in the face of reality. Will the Minister of State commit to speaking to the Office of Government Procurement about this matter?

Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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I am happy to speak to it about that matter. It is worth noting that the feedback I have been getting is that local authorities often source locally. That is really positive. We need to ensure that this is baked into our frameworks going forward to make sure we are being socially aware and that transparency, value for money and efficiency are top priorities for all procurement, whether that is in the context of local authorities or the various Departments.

We have a sourcing team to support any Department, local authority or bodies like the HSE when it comes to sourcing particular goods. I encourage more of our procurement experts in these entities to reach out to the sourcing department in the Office of Government Procurement because its staff are procurement professionals who have a great handle on this matter. This expertise is available to them and it can be used to help them shape their tenders, applications for competitions or smaller bids. It can also be used to help them source suppliers. That is an efficient use of Government resources.