Mairead Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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116. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if her Department and any commercial or non-commercial State bodies and private entities subsidised by 50% or more of public funding under the aegis of her Department have implemented social clauses in their public procurement contracts in the past three years (details supplied); and if so, the nature of these social clauses. [39045/20]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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Procurement is primarily focused on the sustainable delivery of public services and in ensuring value for money. My Department is represented on the Social Considerations Advisory Group and the Strategic Procurement Advisory Group to progress the factoring in of social considerations into procurement processes. Centralised procurement arrangements, provided by the Office of Government Procurement, are used by my Department to ensure broad compliance with procurement regulation, policy and guidelines including Green Public Procurement. Within the education sector, the Education Procurement Service (EPS) is looking to target specific social clauses as part of EPS Priority Objectives for 2021.

Information in respect of the inclusion of social clauses in individual contracts is not routinely compiled by my Department. I will arrange to have the relevant details in respect of the Department's contracts collected and forwarded to the Deputy in due course.

Further information requested in regard to the inclusion of social clauses in contracts by an aegis or other publicly funded education body is not collected by my Department. The information is not readily available and would require significant resources to compile in respect of over 4,000 education related entities. If there is information on a particular body required by the Deputy, I will endeavour to have the information forwarded to her.