Mairead Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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97. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the approach being taken to ensure that the standard in Office of Government Procurement contracts remain in compliance with the core principle of proportionality specifically as it relates to the ownership of IPR in IT cloud service provision; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [26820/21]

Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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The Office of Government Procurement (OGP) has, since April 2016 published a standard suite of contract templates. These templates are designed for above EU threshold tenders and are for use by Public Service Bodies (PSBs) for the procurement of low to medium risk commonly sourced goods and services. Due to the nature of cloud services, the provisions in the standard contract templates are not always appropriate for use in the procurement of cloud services. When procuring such services it is a matter for each PSB to take proper consideration of the appropriateness and proportionality of all provisions in the contracts published as part of their tender documentation. OGP recommends that each PSB seeks legal opinion in this matter.

To assist PSBs the OGP published a Cloud Services Procurement guidance note in February 2021. The purpose of the guidance note is to assist PSBs to understand the general complexity associated with contracting for cloud services and specifically the key contractual and commercial differences between traditional ICT (legacy solution) contracts and cloud services contracts, including IPR related provisions.