Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left)
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644. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills further to Parliamentary Question No. 549 of 12 May 2015 and given the Comptroller and Auditor General’s Report of 29 September 2015 as well as the statement regarding the home tuition scheme, if she will set out the reason her Department did not engage in a competitive procurement process for the provision of these services, as detailed in the report, but instead, as previously highlighted, made only one exception and paid millions of euro exclusively for a number of years to one private commercial organisation, despite her Department being fully aware of similar parent-led charities in existence at that time which provided similar services. [34330/15]

Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left)
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645. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills given the Comptroller and Auditor General’s Report of 29 September 2015 and the statement that her Department annually provides details of procurement contracts above €25,000 that have been awarded without a competitive process to both the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the Comptroller and Auditor General, to explain the reason her Department failed to include details of the annual payment of millions of euro to the one private commercial organisation in the returns submitted. [34331/15]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 644 and 645 together.

In his Report on the Report of the Accounts of the Public Services, 2014, the Comptroller and Auditor General reported, in section 12.33, that some tuition for pre-school children with autism is delivered by specialist providers in a classroom setting at a cost to the Department of around €4 million in 2014. In areas where such services are available, it is for the parents to choose between tuition provided by a tutor in the home and the classroom-based tuition. The report also notes that the Department does not engage in a competitive procurement process for the provision of classroom-based tuition by specialist providers. Instead, the Department each year agrees a fee basis with the specialist providers in respect of tuition delivered to children approved for home tuition.

This is an acknowledgement that parents of children, who are eligible for Home Tuition under the Department's scheme, have the freedom and flexibility to select the specialist provider themselves, subject to the provider's agreement to comply with the general provisions of the scheme and to the cost and payment arrangements set out be the Department.

In all such cases the contract under which the services of the provider are provided to the eligible child exists between the service provider and the parents. As the Department is not party to these individual contracts they do not form part of the Department's annual return to the either Department of Expenditure and reform or the Comptroller and Auditor General.

While the Department has considered the possibility of tendering for such services, the Department is conscious that the procurement of such services centrally through a procurement process would remove the option from parents of selecting their preferred provider. However, the Department is currently exploring the use of procurement frameworks which might allow for agreement of a pricing structure, but with flexibility in relation to volume and drawdown of service and has sought and is awaiting advice from the new Office of Government Procurement (OGP) on this possibility.