Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the number of Government Departments and State agencies that have agreed to participate in procuring innovation initiative since mid-2012; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [3400/13]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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The Procuring Innovation Initiative is one of the measures included in the Action Plan for Jobs to improve access by SMEs to public procurement opportunities. The initiative promotes a new approaching to procurement on the part of Contracting Authorities by encouraging them to tender for a solution to a particular requirement, without being overly prescriptive as to what the solution might be.

The objective is to allow greater scope for innovative SMEs to offer new solutions that can provide better value for money and more effective products/services for the Contracting Authorities.

Not every public contract will necessarily be amenable to the Procuring Innovation approach. The aim, however, is to identify a number of projects across the public service that are suitable to the provision of more innovative solutions and which can serve as exemplars for an expansion of this approach.

A number of Departments and agencies expressed a willingness to participate in the Procuring Innovation Initiative in 2012. These include the Railway Procurement Agency (RPA), the Department of Defence, the HSE, ESB, the Department of Justice and Equality, the Irish Prison Service, An Garda Síochána and An Post. Enterprise Ireland has also been working with Bord Gáis in the context of the interim Irish Water utility to identify suitable projects for inclusion in the Procuring Innovation Initiative.

Each of these Contracting Authorities has been working with Enterprise Ireland to develop an approach to tendering that will encourage the submission of innovative solutions for selected projects by SMEs.

Each project is unique and will require a customised call for tenders. Similarly, the development of each project is progressing at different pace and is actively monitored by Enterprise Ireland. I understand that good progress is being made, in particular, with the RPA, ESB and Bord Gáis/Irish Water projects.

It is intended that the initial batch of projects will act as exemplars for an expansion of the Procuring Innovation Initiative in 2013.