Noel Grealish (Galway West, Independent)
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Question 401: To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality the number of public contracts awarded to European companies and the number awarded to indigenous companies over the past five years; the monetary value of the projects awarded to European companies as opposed to indigenous companies for the past five years; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [11612/11]

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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My Department's procurements operate within the legal framework of EU procurement directives and the guidance of the Department of Finance for procurements under EU thresholds - all tenders over €25,000 are publicly advertised either on e-tenders or in the EU Journal.

As part of its procurement controls my Department has had in place a database for contracts placed over €25,000 for the last 3 years. It also has records of contracts placed earlier than 2008 and still in place during the period under question. It would not have records of contracts placed and concluded earlier than 2008. However, my Department considers this database to be a representative source for the purposes of the question as it covers contracts within and outside the scope of the EU Journal.

An examination of the records in this database which covers all expenditure in the above €25,000 category allowed an assessment to be made of companies as

a. companies headquartered in Ireland,

b. international companies with a branch in Ireland,

c. companies from other EU countries and

d. companies from outside the EU.

These are not formal categorisations and represent a best estimate by my Department of the status of companies in the database.

In addition there is a portion of expenditure under the €25,000 threshold not captured in the database. As this is procured using local tendering it can be assumed that the companies concerned are generally small and are all headquartered in Ireland.

Over the last 5 years my Department's expenditure on goods and services has been

2006 €240,456,000

2007 €293,666,000

2008 €296,317,000

2009 €241,222,000

2010 €213,969,000

Based on the assumptions outlined above, 98% of the €1,285,630,000 expenditure on goods and services fall under the categories (a) and (b) above. On this basis, it is estimated that for the five year period €1,285,630,000 was paid to companies either headquartered in Ireland or international companies with a branch in Ireland and €25,712,600 was paid to other EU and non-EU companies.