Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will briefly respond, particularly in respect of amendment No. 36. The issue is that much legislation has come through this House regarding financial supports for business and the business sector. It is reasonable we seek to ensure best practice from those who are receiving financial supports, loans and grants and who may, for example, be eligible for projects under the recovery and resilience fund and so forth. I note my amendment does not simply relate to public procurement but also to those many other forms of support and assistance and, indeed, straight financial transfer through grants or funds, the State makes available to a number of businesses.

On the public procurement question, the Minister's colleague, the Minister of State at the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Ossian Smyth, has, in fairness, so far supported my legislation in respect of quality in public procurement. At the moment, as our public procurement legislation stands, there has unfortunately been an extremely cautious approach on the exact question of whether we might be sued or if there might be a judicial review. This is the kind of thing that makes me nervous about the chilling effect, whereby there has been a reluctance to set quality criteria, or even set a fairly basic and certainly objective standard, which is whether there has been compliance. This is not about whether someone did wonderfully, or if the published results were fantastic in relation to section 20A, it is about whether the breakdown has in fact been published. The amendment is not prescriptive about how well someone did or did not do when the breakdown is published, it is simply about stating the standards are being complied with.

I appreciate engaging with the Minister but it might be useful to chat between Committee and Report Stages to the Minister of State, Deputy Smyth, and the Office of Government Procurement to confirm those issues can be captured. There may be measures around capturing them within procurement policy at the moment. I am concerned because, very often, it is down to lowest cost. Certain things can be put into quality criteria where they get a weighting while other issues may be put in as technical specifications. This might be something that will need to be put in as a specification. I am not sure if it can be dealt with under the quality criteria, only because, unfortunately, the majority of public contracts are still done on lowest cost only and not on the basis of quality.

I will withdraw the amendment. However, at this point I might indicate this may be an issue worth checking with the Minister's Government colleague who, in fairness, has engaged constructively with me on the issue of quality in public procurement. I reserve the right to bring the amendment back on Report Stage if we do not have a sense there is a mechanism for including these measures in the legislation or procurement process as stands.