Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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293. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform if he will provide a breakdown of the number of companies that have availed of the recently launched Tender Advisory Service, by sector. [34085/15]

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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The Tender Advisory Service (TAS) was launched on 1st February 2015 to provide an informal outlet for potential suppliers to raise concerns in relation to a particular live tender process.The service is aimed at improving communications with suppliers and increasing professionalism and consistency in the way procurement processes are carried out across the public service.

To date, 23 suppliers have engaged with the service.

Of these queries, 19 were not appropriate to the service for various reasons including:

- the issue raised was of a general nature

-the supplier had not yet engaged with or exhausted the existing query/clarification process which is part of the tendering process,

- the supplier had engaged with the service too late i.e., following the tender closing date.

In these instances the queries were redirected for answer either to the OGP Customer Service Team or  the Contracting Authority dealing with a specific tender.

The four eligible queries were received from the following sectors/ categories of goods and services:

1. Furniture
2. Laboratory Equipment
3. Graphic Design/Print Service
4. Digitisation Service