Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Question 412: To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if his Department has a corporate procurement plan; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [6347/06]

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Question 413: To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the progress made within his Department on reviewing existing contract specifications awarded by all Departments; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [6362/06]

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 412 and 413 together.

My Department will prepare a corporate procurement plan during the course of 2006. Following the Minister for Finance's speech late last year on achieving value for money, the Department of Finance issued guidelines requiring that formalised contract reviews be undertaken by Departments of projects costing over €30 million. There are no projects undertaken by my Department which come near that level of expenditure. None the less, my Department is very conscious of the need to achieve value for money in all aspects of the expenditure of public resources. To that end, all projects of any significant size will normally have a project manager and a project steering group to ensure that the projects deliver on agreed commitments.

On IT projects, which are probably the largest single area of contract expenditure by my Department, all such projects are agreed on a fixed price basis with clear and specific deliverables and are subject to continuing oversight. In the case of IT service or support contracts which run for more than one year, it is Departmental policy to include a clause in the contract document that provides for a formal review of the contract after a particular time interval. Such contracts are reviewed in accordance with the terms laid down in the contract agreement.