Séamus Kirk (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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335. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform his plans to overhaul the procurement legislation in order to provide small and medium enterprises with a better chance to compete on tenders; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [20428/15]

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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Public Procurement is governed by EU and National rules. The aim of these rules is to promote an open, competitive and non-discriminatory public procurement regime which delivers best value for money. It would be a breach of the EU rules for a public body to favour or discriminate against particular candidates on grounds such as nationality, geographic location or organisational size, and there are legal remedies which may be used against any public body infringing these rules.

I would point out that the reform of public procurement in Ireland is being carried out in a manner that recognises the clear importance of small and medium-sized enterprises in this country's economic recovery. The recently published report by the Office of Government Procurement (OGP) "Public Service Spend and Tendering Analysis for 2013" showed that 93% of public service procurement expenditure was with businesses in the Republic of Ireland. This was based on an analysis of €2.742 billion expenditure across 64 large public service bodies involving over 35,000 suppliers.

At EU level there is a growing recognition of the need to promote and facilitate SME participation in public procurement. The New EU Directives on Procurement are currently being transposed by the Office of Government Procurement. They are intended to make it easier for businesses and SMEs to tender for public sector procurement contracts. They are designed to simplify the rules and provide more flexibility for public purchasers. The directives contain measures specifically designed to improve access for SMEs and start-ups.

These include:

- except in justified cases, turnover requirements will be explicitly limited to two times the estimated contract value.

- acceptance of self-declarations for evaluating the capacity and capability until the award stage

- the promotion of e-procurement with mandatory electronic availability of procurement documents;

- contracting authorities to comply or explain in relation to the division of contracts into lots;

- Member States to provide the Commission with detail on SME participation. (Such monitoring can support consistent application across all Member States and ensure that the objective of greater SME involvement is being delivered.)

I would also point out that the Office of Government Procurement (OGP), which falls under the remit of my Department, has accelerated some of these key measures in Circular 10/14 which issued in April 2014 including the requirements to tender in an open and transparent process on-line, reductions in bidder's turnover requirements, proportional and reasonable insurance requirements, and breaking larger contracts down into lots.

In addition the OGP is working with industry representative bodies to promote the engagement of Irish business in public procurement (including ISME, IBEC, SFA, Chambers Ireland, and CIF) as well as the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, InterTrade Ireland, and Enterprise Ireland. Last year, for example, the OGP supported two "Meet the Buyer" events in Belfast and Dublin which were attended by over 1,100 suppliers. The OGP also supported the 'Go 2 Tender' programme run by InterTrade Ireland which was attended by approximately 400 SMEs.  

The OGP will continue to work on behalf of Government with industry to ensure that winning public procurement contracts is done in a fair, transparent and accessible way and to ensure that Government procurement policies are business friendly.