Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Government has no intention of going anywhere, the Senator will be glad to hear. If the Senator read the whole piece from the programme for government he would see that it states we task the Office of Government Procurement to update all procurement frameworks in line with agreeing procurement practice over the next three years. It is quite generous to state we will look at this in the next 12 months. I can also see the Minister has worked very closely with Senator Higgins, and she would agree with this, and with all of the other Senators involved.

I very much welcome that we would come back to the Bill and it is correct that it is a timed amendment. We need to be practical about things. We could just put in a timed amendment for tomorrow but if, in looking through what needs to go into it, we came back tomorrow and it was not green and did not protect workers' rights, then there would be no point to it. The proposal for 12 months sounds very decent and I hope everybody will join with me in supporting it. It is important that we do not throw around nonsense figures that would not be achievable. What is very clear is that the Government put a Green Party Minister in this area so it does show it is very important to us. There is quite a significant amount in the programme for Government that also shows it is really important to us.

People are probably sick of hearing about what I did in my past life but I did work in procurement for a few years as well as everything else. Sometimes what happens is that procurement is done behind closed doors. We need to have robust systems in place because sometimes it is the person with the most money or the lowest contract that will get it. Sometimes it feels like a box-ticking exercise. We have to make sure there are enough boxes to cover every eventuality and make sure everybody is protected in it. Procurement does not hit the headlines until something goes wrong. Nobody is watching. The systems need to be in place but they need to be robust systems. I welcome everything in the Bill and it is coming from a very good place. The fact that Senator Higgins has worked with the Government to change the previous iteration shows a good working relationship and I hope it continues.