Dominic Hannigan (Meath East, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context

Question 423: To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality the number of tenders or contracts that have been awarded at a value of more than €100,000 in each of the past three years from his Department; the evaluation used when comparing these tenders; the number that have been evaluated using a scoring mechanism in which at least 50% of the scoring mechanism was on the basis of cost; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [30389/12]

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context

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 - as required, all tenders over €25,000 are publicly advertised either on etenders or in the EU Journal.

As part of its procurement controls my Department has had in place a database for all contracts placed over €25,000 for the last number of years. It also has records of contracts placed earlier than 2009 and still in place during the period under question. 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, including contracts over €100,000 in value.

An examination of the records in this database which covers all expenditure above €100,000 for the period in question allowed an assessment to be made of contracts as follows, reflecting changing compliance thresholds at both National and EU levels : a. Contracts valued between €25,000 and €124,999 b. Contracts valued between €50,000 and €124,999 c. Contracts valued over €125,000.

There is no formal categorisation of the specific award criteria in each instance and the response below represents a best estimate in the time allowed of the number of contracts recorded in the Database that have been awarded, at a value of more than €100,000 in each of the past three years by my Department, where in the scoring mechanism at least 50% of the award criteria was on the basis of cost.

It should be noted that in the matter of all publicly held competitive tender exercises, the Award Criteria used by the Department for the evaluation of proposals is 'The Most Economically Advantageous Tender'. The majority of contracts awarded on foot of supplementary tenders run from Framework Agreements, are evaluated by means of 100% Lowest Cost as the Award Criterion, though not exclusively.