Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am covering this matter for Senator Dooley, who is the Fianna Fáil spokesperson on this issue. I am not as familiar with the area as Senator Craughwell or some other Members are but I have been a member of the transport committee for the past year and am somewhat familiar with some of the concerns of Senator Craughwell. I appreciate that the Minister of State is in a position where it is a live procurement process and she feels very much restricted in what she can say. I totally get that. People who are bidding on the process have a right to have a fair hearing and a fair process. There are concerns, however. There are certainly concerns that Senator Craughwell has raised repeatedly and I would like answers for him, and for us all, just to put those concerns to bed one way or the other.

I want answers to the questions. I certainly want an answer on the issue of how much we will allegedly pay for what we are getting compared with what is being paid in other jurisdictions for what they are getting. It may be that we are not comparing like with like, but I do not know if that is the case. I need to see a process that allows me to recognise there is a reason, such as it being 24-hour service, extra services being provided here or the UK's Royal Air Force being a much larger air force than our Air Corps. I do not know. Certainly the very sad event of the R116 tragedy brought into our minds just how important the Coast Guard is and how dangerous a job it does. It is really important that, in as much as the Minister of State, the Secretary General and the Department can, they answer these suggestions, allegations, complaints and issues. They should put the answers out there where they can so do, and say that certain matters are not true or are being misunderstood or misinterpreted.I am not as much of a conspiracy theorist as some people but I am not suggesting there are not questions to be answered. There are answers that I would like to hear. Senators Doherty, Buttimer and all of us would like to hear answers to various questions that have been raised, even if it is just to say that there is nothing to see here. The longer we hear that we cannot talk about or see something, the more that leads to people having less confidence in the process. We are overpaying for a service. It is a vital service but we do not want to be paying multiples of what we need to pay for it because that money is then not available for all the other services we need to provide. I thank Senator Craughwell for continually raising the issue. He knows more about it and is more involved, over a longer period, in it. He is not doing it for the good of his health or just for the sake of it. He has genuine concerns and inasmuch as a Department can answer those concerns, it should. There are rules about procurement processes and contracts and so on. I am not making specific reference to this particular procurement process but there are things that possibly could be addressed in a wider sense regarding what we are looking for and what was the background to it. I do not suggest that anything bad is going on here but the most important thing is that we can nail it by saying there is nothing wrong here, we have shown it, articulated the points made in greater detail and answered on every question as much as we can. I thank Senator Craughwell for putting this down as an item for discussion and I thank the Minister of State for her response.

I appreciate the difficult position the Minister of State is in. We have been on the transport committee and have had back and forth with the Department about whether we could meet its representatives in private, in public, or at all, or whether the meetings would be minuted or not. All these various topics have being discussed. We are all looking for as much transparency as we can get for the benefit of everybody but most importantly for the benefit of the users of the service and the taxpayers who are ultimately paying for the services. We want the best service we can get at the best value. It is important we understand why our contract appears to be much more expensive than others. That is not about this particular bidding process but there may be reasons our process and contract seem to be much dearer than the other one. Maybe we are getting many more services in our contract but I do not know that and that is what we need to know. We need to understand what is being asked for of the contract and the contractor, whoever they are, who ultimately does this. I get that there is not an enormous field of people who are able to provide these services. It is a relatively small number of people who have the wherewithal to provide this contract. I appreciate in some of these global, multinational companies that there are many directors who are directors of other companies. I am not saying that any of them are sitting around talking. There are usually Chinese walls in companies to make sure stuff does not happen but we need to nail all that down and show the public, Senator Craughwell and anyone else who is watching and is concerned about it, that we have done everything we can do as a State to meet international best practice.