Seán Kyne (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the tenet of Senator Higgins's Bill. Obviously, procurement is quite complicated, particularly for major projects. It is an area that is open to legal challenge. The simplest approach is to award contracts to those who submit the lowest tender. Are changes likely to result in more prolonged processes of legal challenges or scrutiny? I wonder if this proposal could lead to further delays in the awarding of tenders, although I believe there is merit in what the Senator is proposing and has laid out.

Another point relates to certain contractors that might not have the best record in the delivery of certain projects, who came through the system having offered the lowest prices for those projects, then tendering for similar projects. Could these contractors' problematic history be taken into account in assessing further tenders? I refer to companies that have created problems and delivered projects with unacceptable delays. There is merit in looking at that because we have seen this issue in certain public developments and in private developments that received certain amounts of public money that I can think of. In these cases, a given company submitted the lowest tender but its reputation was such that, if it could have, the board would not have accepted it based on what it had heard, what it knew and previous history. I know it is difficult to put down on paper what might be possible but it is an area we need to look at.