Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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248. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment if he and-or his departmental officials have met a person (details supplied) and-or representatives of companies in the past two years to date; if so, if he will publish a schedule of those meetings and the associated minutes; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42816/18]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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The Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment has a broad remit and is responsible for communications, broadcasting, postal services, energy, natural resources, climate change, waste management, air quality and environmental policy.  The day-to-day functions of the Department in carrying out its remit, therefore, involve engagement with a broad range of stakeholders.

The NBP procurement process is being conducted as a “Competitive Dialogue” process which is a procedure used where:

- The need of the contracting authority cannot be met without adaption of readily available solutions;

- The technical specifications for the contract could not be established in advance with sufficient precision:

- the complexity of the project and potential solution required negotiation.

The NBP Competitive Dialogue process by its nature has involved a significant level of interaction with each of the bidders that participated in that process, including more than 230 meetings between the NBP Procurement Team and representatives of the Granahan McCourt led consortium, since the Competitive Dialogue process commenced in July 2016. As these meetings form part of an ongoing public procurement process it is not proposed to publish further details at this time. My Department has informed me that former Minister Naughten was not involved in any of those meetings.

Enet is the Management Services Entity for the State Owned Metropolitan Area Networks that come within the remit of the Department. 

The Department has compiled details of other meetings at Ministerial, or Official level (Principal Officer or above) with David McCourt, Granahan McCourt and enet that did not form part of the NBP Competitive Dialogue process. In the interest of completeness, details are included of any meetings for the period with the other members that had participated in the bidder consortium, i.e. SSE, John Laing and 3i.

A schedule of these meetings is set out in the table. I will arrange for a copy of the associated meeting notes to be forwarded to the Deputy, subject to any redaction necessary to protect confidential or commercially sensitive information.  

It is worth noting that the terms of reference for the independent audit of the procurement process provides that the process auditor will be free, at his own discretion,  to review all relevant documentation held by the Department and/or to seek written or oral inputs from any relevant party.