Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

On the latter point, a balance must be struck. In seeking the permission of both Houses to advance this legislation, we are asking to give the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform and his Department the opportunity to strike the balance in a fair way that will allow people to see the opportunity presented by the lottery, while at the same time putting in place the safety valves we would like to see. The way in which one should strike that balance is through ministerial order and negotiation, rather than primary legislation, notwithstanding the fact that the primary legislation needs to set out the standard on which the discussions, negotiations and deal between the winning bidder and the Government are to take place. The balance needs to be struck at the end of the process, having regard to the fact that all of these issues have been raised in the context of the discussion in both Houses.

I do not disagree with Senator Thomas Byrne's point. The small contracts announced locally from time to time are an important source of local employment. In many cases, the contracting is carried out by the local authority as opposed to the State. The State gives a block grant for various purposes, including road construction and flood relief works, for example. Local authorities need to be mindful of this and of how they construct their panels and proceed with procurement. It is fair to state we all want , the Government's website for the purposes of procurement, to contain every SME. I understand up to 50% of all Irish SMEs do not even know about it. One cannot pitch for Government business unless one knows about Government business. That is important. There ought to be confidence at local authority level that we will run the competitions in a fair and open way to allow businesses, both big and small, to pitch. The Senator has made a fair point that if one sets out the block grant by way of announcements by politicians, it may result in a false dichotomy. We always need to be mindful of this and guard against it. The way around it is through the etenders website and using technology for the purposes of achieving better procurement and helping Irish SMEs to determine whether they can win a percentage of the public pie.

The way around this is through e-tenders and using technology for better procurement, as well as helping Irish SMEs to find out if they can win a percentage of the public pie. The public pie, even in these constrained times, is more than €9.5 billion per year. That is a lot of money for the public sector, but SMEs must get their act together to pitch for this business. The way to do that is through better technology.