Arthur Morgan (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Question 465: To ask the Minister for Finance the name of each company which secured a contract over €100,000 in value with his Department in each of the past five years; and the value of each such contract. [24399/05]

Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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My Department had spending on contracts in each of the years in question. These contracts were mainly concerned with reports, consultancies, other advisory or PR commissions, departmental training and maintenance. The NDP-CSF unit, which operates under the aegis of my Department, also had such spending, but a breakdown of that spending is only available on a project by project basis. In addition, the Euro Changeover Board of Ireland, ECBI, which was within my Department's remit, also had such expenditure; details of the board's activities and accounts are set out in the four annual reports of the board which may be accessed on the board's website www.euro.ie.

The information sought by the Deputy for the years 2000-04, inclusive, is set out in the tables that follow. As will be seen from the tables, some projects involved payments in more than one year. In the case of the NDP-CSF unit, the information is provided for each individual project.

In addition to the information provided in the tables, the Department of Finance signed a contract in 2002 with a consortium comprising Eircom and Vodafone Ireland for a range of telecommunications services for the Irish non-commercial public sector. The contract can be availed of for five years; it includes review and roll-over procedures and is managed and monitored by a cross public service group. This Department acted as the contracting authority for this cross public service group specifically established to aggregate public sector telecommunications demand to achieve standardisation and best value for money. The contract established a drawdown facility for use by any non-commercial public sector body. This drawdown facility allows each public body to enter its own contract or contracts with the companies comprising the consortium at their discretion. Consequently, it is not possible for this Department to provide details of the total value. However, in view of the type and range of services available under the drawdown facility and the number of public bodies availing of it, the value per annum is significantly over €100,000. This Department's drawdown is, on average, €450,000 per annum.