Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I want to indicate my intention to table an amendment to this section of the Bill. Section 6 sets out provision for the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform in relation to the issue of guidelines on social considerations, which contracting authorities are obliged to follow. Notwithstanding the amendment tabled by Senator Higgins today, the prescriptive nature of these guidelines could lead to increased legal challenge to procurement competitions and this could disrupt the provision of goods and services for the State, in particular the procurement of urgent and potentially life-critical goods and services. For example, as I mentioned, there are times when we will want to carry out emergency procurement as we did during the pandemic. Would that be affected by these guidelines? It is just something we need to make sure we consider and do not get ourselves into a sticky situation.

The Office of Government Procurement, OGP, has Circular 20/2019 on social considerations, with which the Senator is probably familiar. There is also an information note in this regard. The OGP chairs the strategic procurement advisory group across government, which provides policy advice and direction to public procurers with representatives of the relevant policy Departments on how they can implement social considerations. This will further enable the inclusion of social considerations into procurement processes in an effective manner that has the flexibility to drive the important social considerations that are relevant at the time.