Ciarán Cuffe (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)
Link to this: Individually | In context

Question 238: To ask the Minister for Finance if, in the interest of reducing paper use, his Department has plans to relax or drop the requirement to supply three or more hard copies of tender documentation and to move towards greater use of electronic documentation; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [39736/08]

Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context

The public procurement rules do not specify the number of copies of tender documents to be submitted but they do permit contracting authorities to require the submission of tenders solely by electronic means. The national public procurement website www.etenders.gov.ie, known as ''etenders" and provided by the National Public Procurement Policy Unit of the Department of Finance, has a facility for the submission of tenders electronically. The facility has been available to all public sector organisations since early 2005 and has been (and continues to be) promoted for use by all contracting authorities. My Department has accepted tenders electronically for a number of tendering procedures and I expect the level of usage to increase significantly over the coming year.

The ''etenders" website is used by over 2,000 public sector contracting organisations; between 4,000 and 5,000 tenders are advertised each year and acceptance of electronic tenders offers the potential for significant savings in paper usage. The number of organisations using this facility has almost doubled since May 2008 and we expect this growth to increase even more significantly by the end of 2009 as authorities and suppliers become more familiar and more comfortable with the technology. In addition to the acceptance of tenders on-line, the website also permits contracting authorities to make all documentation associated with a request for tender to be made available on-line, for downloading by suppliers. Approximately 75% of contracting authorities already make use of this facility and we expect to achieve close to 100% by end 2009.