Catherine Ardagh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish to raise two issues, the first of which is whether Ireland will have to return €280 million to the European Union on the basis of the inflated gross domestic product, GDP, figures. Will the Acting Leader ask the Minister for Finance to clarify the position?

The second issue is the challenges facing small and medium-sized enterprises, SMEs, in seeking Government public procurement contracts. The Office of Government Procurement's drive to centralise the public procurement of goods and services is having a detrimental effect on small and medium-sized businesses. Despite some superficial changes to the rules on turnover, essentially, most small businesses are unable to compete with larger companies when it comes to the Government's public procurement strategy. Many small businesses have contacted me in the past few weeks about the matter. They have modest staff numbers and turnover and are pleading with me because they are unable to compete with larger companies. We hear daily that SMEs are the lifeblood of the economy, yet these measures are hitting home and crippling small and local businesses, ranging from legal service providers to stationery and sanitary suppliers.

The problem is that many of the contracts put out to tender by the Government are too large. The Government's advice to small businesses is that they should join together as a consortium to enable them to compete for these contracts. To ask a small company to join with a competitor is grossly unfair. Many small businesses might be family businesses that have been in business for a long time and have trade secrets and it is unfair to ask them to join others and share these trade secrets in an effort to compete for tenders.

Another major issue is that while many tenders are meant to be provided for SMEs, many subsidiaries of larger companies are claiming to be small businesses. This means that predatory pricing is being introduced, whereby SMEs are just not able to compete with larger suppliers. It is really affecting them.

In the past small businesses traditionally dealt with local schools. For example, a principal would have been able to ring and ask a business to deliver a few hundred rolls of toilet paper. Now he or she cannot go to the local supplier but must go online and order from a centralised database. It is to the massive detriment of the local school, as well as local business. Many local and small businesses do not have the confidence or the resources to apply for the larger contracts. It is generally unfair.

Given that SMEs are the lifeblood of the economy, if we do not protect them, we will have no economy. Any of the larger companies could pull out of Ireland on any day and we would be left with no industry. I ask the Acting Leader to raise this issue with the Minister and ask him to revise the public procurement guidelines. If they cannot be revised, perhaps there might be more investment in providing resources for small businesses to enable them to enter and compete in the tender process, as it is a non-transparent and costly exercise to enter it.