Brendan Ryan (Labour)

There are consultants and advisers involved in all scales of activity. Somebody may be given a short contract at a cost of no more than €1,000, while somebody else may be involved in a major task at a cost of €100,000. Is there not a need for a code of conduct or similar procedure in regard to the process by which consultants are appointed whereby a public competition should be the norm? Where a significant sum of money may be involved – I will not argue whether it should be €5,000 or €50,000 – a contract to consultants should not be capable of being offered without some element of advertising and public competition.

I do not want to tie people in excessive knots, but if we are talking about significant sums of money being paid to particular individuals, then good sense dictates that the public understands that this is the consequence of proper public competition. I wonder about EU regulations if public money of the scale of, say, €100,000 is to be spent on a consultant. If this was to be done without transparency, I suspect we would run into problems with the European Union in terms of the rules about not confining competitions to nationals of one country. I would like to hear the Minister's views on the matter.