Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail)
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249. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the number of small and medium-sized enterprises that have been successful in the public procurement process, by county, in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [1512/16]

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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The reform of the procurement system across the public service is a key element of the reform programme for the public service.   Reform of Public Procurement is being carried out in a manner that recognises the importance of SMEs and is committed to ensuring that SMEs are fully engaged with public sector procurement and the opportunities presenting.

While there is no data available as to the number of SMEs that have been successful in the public procurement process, by county, analysis carried and published by the Office of Government Procurement (OGP) in the "Public Service Spend and Tendering Analysis for 2013" indicates that 93% of government procurement expenditure falls within the State and that 66% of this is directly with Irish SMEs. This was based on an analysis of €2.742 billion expenditure across 64 large public service bodies involving over 35,000 suppliers.  Other Key Findings show that 74% of tender notices were of small value (i.e. below EU threshold), with the median contract values by spend categories ranging from €500,000 (Utilities) to €50,000 (Veterinary, Marketing, Print, Stationery, Defence).  Of the €2.742 billion spend data analysed, just over 66% of the value (€1.82 billion) was spent with suppliers whose business was classified as SMEs. The OGP is currently engaged in carrying out analysis for subsequence years.   

The Government's national portal, eTenders, is the central facility for all public sector contracting authorities to advertise procurement opportunities and publish award notices.  The data collected by the eTenders system assists with the analysis of SME participation in public procurement. One of the objectives of the OGP has been to increase the number of SMEs registering on the system indicating their interest in competing for procurement opportunities. The OGP proactively campaign to get more businesses to register with eTenders, this resulted in 12,300 new supplier registrations in 2014 and a further 11,981 in 2015.

The OGP also supports the work of Enterprise Ireland and InterTradeIreland in building awareness of public procurement and supporting training for small suppliers in bidding for public contracts.  For example, last year the Office of Government Procurement supported two Meet the Buyer events, the first was held in Belfast in June and attracted 510 suppliers and a further event was held in Dublin in October attended by 693 suppliers. The Office of Government Procurement also supported the 'Go 2 Tender' programme run by InterTradeIreland which was attended by approximately 400 SME's.  

In 2015 InterTradeIreland also delivered a programme on consortia building to assist SMEs to jointly bid for state contracts. 

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