Gerard Craughwell (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. This is my first time to address her as the Minister of State. I congratulate her on her elevation. I wish her the best of luck. The Minister of State said at the outset that she was responsible for the purchase of everything from major projects down to toilet rolls for national schools. That is a massive undertaking for any Department to have oversight of. Central procurement is all fine and dandy but, when it comes to schools, I am not sure how it operates now but principals came to me saying some of the stuff they were forced to purchase through centralised purchasing could be purchased far cheaper on the open market. They wondered why they were tied to centralised purchasing. Perhaps the Minister could investigate that in her spare time, if she ever gets any. The idea that we centralise everything seems like a great idea but some things are not suitable for centralisation.

I wish to talk about accountability with respect to public procurement. I and others envisaged serious problems in Ireland's search and rescue contract. The Oireachtas joint committee tried on five occasions to have the Secretary General of the Department come before the committee to answer questions. He refused. He gave a number of different reasons. He refused an in camera meeting in private session. He said anything he did say had to be in public session. He refused to come to a public session because he was advised, he said, by the Attorney General not to. He refused a second attempt at a public hearing.On the third attempt, he quoted EU paragraph 17 or something. I read the full document and paragraph 85 said they were responsible and answerable to the Oireachtas. We were not a tendering agency; we were an oversight body. Finally, he accused the Oireachtas joint committee of having a biased member on the committee. His last words were that Secretaries General were not answerable to committees and that that was what Ministers were for, but I had a letter from the joint Ministers saying they had no oversight of the contract. We wonder how we finish up with a children's hospital fiasco. This is how. People on the ground are making decisions. Ministers cannot be everywhere. The portfolios of Ministers in this Government are mind-boggling. I do not know how they get time to do anything. At the end of the day, somebody has to be answerable to Oireachtas joint committees. Somebody has to be prepared to appear before Oireachtas joint committees.

Looking at the paperwork in the search and rescue contract, it was all about people covering themselves. We had an aviation expert, but was that person an aviation expert? We find that person was not a pilot and that he employed one person, namely, himself. We find that the company had one contract, that being, with Ireland. That is €800 million of a contract. Everything we said about that contract going sour has come to pass. It was supposed to be taken over by July of this year and will not now be taken over until 2026. Everything about it has been a disaster.

For the protection of the Minister of State and those dedicated public servants she has in her Department, we need a far more transparent approach to public procurement. As Members of the Oireachtas, we need to be able to raise issues directly with the Department involved and with the principal officer, assistant secretary or Secretary General who is making the decisions. We need the decision-maker to appear before Oireachtas joint committees.

Everything my colleague from Wexford said, I fully support. He is 100% correct. Small to medium-sized businesses and micro-industries must have a simplified method of entering into public contracts. It is not the small contracts that bother me, but the ginormous ones that run to millions of euro. What do we do when something goes wrong? We fire the Minister. When the Minister writes to me saying he had no oversight of this contract and the letter is signed by the two Ministers responsible, who is responsible? Where do we turn? Public procurement is the largest single expenditure this country has. Recently, we bought four helicopters for the Air Corps. I understand they were bought without going to tender. Someone simply went to the supplier and told it to provide four helicopters. How is that good value for money? Why was there not a competition? EU rules allow for direct purchase without competition in the defence area but it is a question of oversight. It will be interesting to see what we are paying for each of those helicopters and what other countries are paying for them when there is no competition.

On the search and rescue issue, there was a company used to oversee the paperwork. I am not going to name the company because I am sure it does a good job, but it does a good job of checking to make sure the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed. It has no expertise in what is required for the job. Its personnel are not aviators. They are just people who look at contracts and say they are good and meet all the necessary requirements. We have an aviation expert who is a one-man operation and we have an outside oversight agency that says all the right things have been done. The Oireachtas joint committee really needs to be able to interrogate the aviation expert and ask who he is, what his qualifications are and how he can do this. The same would apply to any engineering job that is undertaken in the State or to any major development. We need to be able to talk to the people who are advising our Departments.

I think colleagues will agree that, if we look across Europe, we will see we have become risk averse in public service. I spoke about this in January. Ardnacrusha cost 20% of our GDP. Imagine the Minister and civil servants who signed off on that. They were the most imaginative people we ever had. Everybody was against what they were doing, including the Department of Finance, but they ploughed ahead and we had electricity all over Ireland at the end of the Ardnacrusha project. We need that sort of risk taking to come back into the public service. We need public servants who are not afraid of losing their pensions if they make a mistake. We all make mistakes and if it happens, it happens. This morning, the Tánaiste had to announce that the national children's hospital would not now open for a further three months. It is going to miss its opening date again. I am sure that frustrates the hell out of the good people in the Minister of State's Department who are trying to move things along, and in the Department of Health, the HSE and every other organisation that is involved.

I appreciate the Minister of State's speech. It was a vision of a future in public service and public procurement. I would like to see that vision come to pass. I would like to see all the other Departments buying into it and accepting that her vision is the vision they should employ. Let us get some serious work done.

I fully agree with my colleague from Wexford that we must get the little guys in this country making money out of procurement. Let us not give it all to major multinationals.

I thank the Minister of State for her time and wish her the very best of luck.