Cathal Byrne (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State. I thank her for facilitating us with her presence. I welcome our guests. I hope they have a wonderful and enjoyable trip to Leinster House. I am the Fine Gael spokesperson on public expenditure and infrastructure. I look forward to working with the Minister of State and the ongoing engagement we have had on some of these key issues. The whole idea of public procurement has to be based on securing value for money for the taxpayer. At the moment, 99.8% of businesses in the country are small- and medium-sized enterprises. It is important in our focus on public procurement that those businesses are in a position to apply and secure these tenders, making sure it is possible for them to compete with larger companies when it comes to securing a public contract. I commend the Minister of State on the work on the national strategic dialogue workshops. It is important the Minister of State and senior officials hear directly from the businesses applying for these contracts about challenges and issues they may have. In the programme for Government, there is a commitment to review the public procurement process. As part of that, I urge the Minister of State and her officials to make sure the process by which the State tenders for these contracts is simple, accessible to small and medium-sized enterprises and done in plain English. We know how hard small business owners work and how caught they are for time. It is important that if they decide to take the initiative and apply for a contract that could generate more employment for them and transform their business, particularly if they won a substantial contract from the State, the process does not put them off applying because of how long, technical and complicated it is. There should never be a situation that somebody needs to outsource the tendering process application stage to a separate provider. Every small business should be able to apply for these contracts. It should not be the case that you have to stop what you are doing in your business, pause everything and spend a week or two gathering up information and then submitting your application. As part of this review, I encourage the Minister of State to make training available through local enterprise offices, ensuring businesses are able and upskilled and that it is possible for them to apply for these tenders.

I know the Minister of State has experience in the Department. There a massive opportunity to support our small and medium enterprises through the local enterprise offices. In my experience in Wexford and from speaking to businesses in advance of today's debate, they are not fully aware of how to apply for a Government contract, where to start, who decides, if it is a website, etc. Through local enterprise offices, there needs to be a promotional campaign to say the review is under way and to explain how to apply for contracts available today, next week, next month and the rest of the year. There is an opportunity in that regard for the Minister of State to lead on.

I highlight the enormous number of contracts provided through local authorities. It is important, within the confines of EU procurement law, that it is possible for local authorities to create a hierarchy where local suppliers and small businesses have a genuine opportunity to compete for contracts with the local authority. I am aware there are challenges and issues with European Union legislation in this area but we should support local businesses to apply for local authority contracts. If we can get to that stage while ensuring value for taxpayers' money, it would be significant.

I wish to highlight a business in Wexford called Kent Stainless. It was set up in 1982 by Pat Kent and now employs more than 200 people. Everyone will have seen the great work it has done. When you go to a Luas stop anywhere in Dublin, the passenger shelters, timetable stands, bollards and waste bins were all produced in its plant in Ardcavan in Wexford. That came from a public procurement process that gave the business the opportunity to compete with international companies for the provision of those stainless steel products. It is now a thriving business in Wexford that exports stainless steel products across the world. They will tell you a key ingredient in their success over the years was securing that contract for the works on the Luas. The joke in Wexford is that it built everything at the Luas stop apart from the Luas itself. I also wish to discuss the opportunities we have as a country in the EU review of the framework for public procurement taking place at the moment. There is a genuine opportunity for us during our Presidency of the EU to have a real input into the procurement processes being reviewed at EU level. It should always be the case that there is value for taxpayers' money and ensuring competitiveness. A big challenge which we all know across the EU is how competitive the EU is versus other large economies like China and America. There is an opportunity for us during the Presidency of the EU and for the Minister of State to take the lead on this. I encourage her to ensure the same thread of plain English and basic, inviting, simplified and easy to understand tender documents transfers to the European Union level.

I commend the work by, I believe, 127 employees in the Office of Government Procurement. Billions of euro are delivered in contracts through that office each year. It is important to put on the record of the House my appreciation for the work in that area and to encourage them to continue the pursuit of value for money on behalf of all taxpayers.