Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am proud to be accused of finally saying something gendered. I had wondered for so long what that actually means.

Some €11 billion per annum is spent by the State on public procurement, which is 13% of our entire public spending. This shows the vast amount of money at stake here and how much there is to be misspent. It also shows the purchasing clout of the State and what should be an ability to demand the best value for money. We are all too aware of situations where seeking the lowest price rather than the best price has led to poor outcomes for the State and its people. Senator Higgins's briefing note on the Bill mentioned the CervicalCheck scandal where low cost was a priority, leading directly to misdiagnoses of scores of women and in so many cases to sadness and justified indignation. The Senator's point was a welcome reminder and an astute illustration of the problem.

I have raised the issue of the national children's hospital many times in recent years. Clearly, the tender accepted for that project was unrealistically low and this has led to endless increases in costs. A project that was tendered at €432 million in 2017 was valued at €1 billion in 2019. When push comes to shove it will probably exceed €2 billion by the time it is finished. One must wonder, genuinely, how this was possible. Clearly, the factors included woefully inadequate oversight at a political and Civil Service level within the Department of Health and a hands-off attitude by the former Minister for Health, Deputy Harris. Inadequate and unrealistic estimates were clearly made at the tendering stage. Was achieving a lowest price a factor in this? I think perhaps it was.

My reading of the Bill is that it would introduce a greater concept of what is referred to as best value pricing, BVP. I understand this was originally an American concept but that it has spread to Europe. In the Netherlands it is known as prestatie-inkoop- I have probably pronounced that terribly - which means performance-based procurement. We should support the adoption of this practice in Ireland.

The Bill also binds the State to ensuring its obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights are factored into public procurement. This, surely, should be uncontroversial. The Bill introduces concepts of social considerations into procurement. I would be interested to hear more about what kinds of social considerations might be taken into account here and what these would look like in practice. I often wonder whether large construction projects, for example, the renovation and redevelopment of 1950s council housing in Dublin city, employ many people from the communities where the developments take place? There have been huge developments in the Dublin docklands and Grand Canal area in the past decade, most of which were in the private sector admittedly. I get the impression that despite relatively high unemployment in these areas, very few local people were employed in the construction of these office buildings or indeed in the multinational business that later occupied them. Perhaps this is also the case in publicly-funded projects. Whether this issue could be taken into account under the heading of social consideration seems to be well worth considering.

I thank the Acting Chairperson for the latitude shown during my contribution.