Conor Murphy (Sinn Fein)

I welcome the Minister of State. It is an area I had some opportunity to deal with in a previous role that I had, when I was responsible for procurement in the Department of Finance in the North. Of course, one of the first considerations is value for money, as the Minister of State mentioned. We need to make sure that the system is not delivering inefficiencies. In that regard, an important aspect that does not seem to be emphasised in the Minister of State's statement is the need for timely production of information and data so people can see where contracts have strayed over and why and learn the lessons of some of the people who have secured contracts that are underperforming.It seems there is a long period until that information is available. We need to ensure opportunities to learn lessons from the way things are procured, but also regarding the performances of people who procure Government contracts. Timely publication, particularly of bad procurement experiences, is vital to learning lessons.

As the Minister of State said, there is enormous potential for doing public good in respect of procurement. By her own analysis, 20% of GDP is a significant amount of funds the Government is expending on buying services and goods which can be used to support Government policy in a range of areas. While the Government is trying to encourage people to do things, this a policy lever that is available.

The Minister of State mentioned making sure SMEs and social enterprises have improved access and better information, and that is very important. In respect of the supply chain, the ability to encourage people to become involved in the production of goods is valuable. The Covid experience taught us one thing, which is that critical goods not being available to us at the time because they were cheapest in the Far East became a real issue for these islands. There was an opportunity then, which was availed of across the island, and I remember my own experience dealing with it, to get companies to repurpose and supply critical goods for our medical and health services to deal with Covid. Who knows when the next pandemic may come along? If lessons have been learned, we need to ensure public procurement supports. I realise raw materials and other resources are not so readily available on this island, but through procurement we can look at the issue of security of supply chains. That was one of the main lessons that arose from the Covid experience.

The Minister of State mentioned social considerations. I would like to see if the review delves more deeply into that as it seems a vague concept. What are the social considerations? It seems to be it is about making sure social enterprises have more information on how to engage in procurement contracts and secure more contracts, and that is important and necessary, but much more can be done in this area. I chaired the procurement board north of the Border as then Minister of Finance. The board involved people from the private sector who tendered for contracts, social enterprises and the voluntary and community sector, as well as civil servants from procurement functions within a number of Departments, and we came together and established an agreement whereby anyone who secured a Government contract had to at a minimum pay a living wage as set by the Living Wage Foundation. Government contracts could not be secured by anyone unless they paid that. There was also a requirement for people to reach 10% of the value of the contract to be dedicated to social clauses. The intention, and I understand the Department of Finance is working through this, is to move that to 20% of the value of all contracts being dedicated towards social clauses. That was the requirement if the contract was to be won. Procuring services from social enterprises could be part of it, as well as providing apprenticeships and work opportunities for long-term unemployed people, along with social and environmental benefits. There was no prescriptive order to it, but we ensured the social enterprise sector created a directory of services to allow contractors to readily engage with those they needed to acquire services from to meet that 10% requirement, which, as I said, it is hoped will move to 20%.

That is not a legal requirement. Senator Craughwell made the point that these things appear to be guidance. What they need is the Cabinet's approval in order that they become a requirement for each Department. Guidance can be taken and ignored or played around with in terms of flexibilities in it. We took the procurement guidance notes to the Executive to get its imprimatur. That meant it was a requirement across all government departments and public bodies and not just guidance. There was also an opportunity for the awarding of preferred contracts to social enterprises to provide services, so that they alone were tendering for that particular service and to give them a preferred status.

There are opportunities for this review to go much further and to use some of the powers available to the Minister of State to make sure that, rather than just giving information to people to secure contracts, which is very important because you want to have a level playing field in that regard, to actually go much further and make it a requirement for others to secure contracts that they have social clauses attached.

There is also an opportunity, which is not discussed in the statement so much, relating to ethical procurement. The Government is a big buyer of goods and services, not only within the State, but from other parts of the world. I noted the statements yesterday of the Tánaiste and the Taoiseach and some statements this morning in this House regarding issues in the Middle East and some of the challenges they are presenting. However, there are issues across the world regarding exploitation of workers and resources. There is a responsibility on the Government, as one with ethical standards, to ensure those standards are translated into its buying power, to make sure ethical considerations become a part of public procurement, and that that, in turn, becomes a direction for all public bodies to make sure what the Government does filters down to everyone spending public funds and to make sure those ethical considerations are brought into play.

I look forward to seeing the paper - I know work on it was published in March - and to have an opportunity to engage further on it. I am sure that will be the case in both Houses. There are some very good ideas and a determination to get a centralised direction on all of this. There is much that can be done in terms of ethical procurement that can produce so much social good, not just for the people who live in this jurisdiction but for those across the world.