Albert Dolan (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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113. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade if framework-based procurement is included in his Department’s reporting of “tendered” procurement in its annual accounts; if so, to distinguish between contracts awarded via framework mini-competition, contracts awarded via direct drawdown from a framework without competition and frameworks run independently by his Department versus those centrally established by the Office of Government Procurement; and to provide the value of procurement for each such category in the past three years. [27020/25]

Albert Dolan (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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114. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade to provide a list of all framework agreements used by his Department or its agencies since 2022, by name and description of framework; if it was established by his Department, the OGP, or another central/sectoral body; if it is a single-supplier or multi-supplier framework; if drawdowns required mini-competitions; and the total number of contracts and aggregate value of payments made under each framework agreement, by year. [27038/25]

Albert Dolan (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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115. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade if all drawdowns from frameworks by his Department or its agencies from 1 January 2022 to 31 December 2024, valued over €25,000 were accompanied by publication of a contract award notice on the eTenders portal as required by Circular 05/2023; and if not, to list any known contracts where such publication did not occur and the reason. [27056/25]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 113, 114 and 115 together.

I will answer PQs 27020/25, 27038/25 and 27056/25 together.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is responsible for two Votes - Vote 27 (International Cooperation) and Vote 28 (Foreign Affairs and Trade).

The policy of the Department is to operate competitive tendering as standard procedure in order to achieve best value for money. Procurement takes place in the context of Directive 2014/24/EU and supported by Procurement Guidelines 2023 published by the Office of Government Procurement (OGP).

The Department does not compile the detailed information requested for frameworks in the format sought. The Department publishes details of specific procurements in its Annual Report

(www.gov.ie/en/department-of-foreign-affairs/collections/annual-reports/).

The Department publishes tenders on both the government procurement platform (eTenders website) and also on the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEC) site. In addition, the Department publishes details of procurement related payments for both frameworks and contracts over €20,000, on a quarterly basis at www.gov.ie/en/department-of-foreign-affairs/organisation-information/payments-over-20000/.

The Department participates fully in on-going initiatives of the OGP focusing especially on achieving procurement savings, including the use of central framework agreements for the provision of different categories of supplies and services. The Department also runs its own procurement tender processes for goods and services that are not covered by central OGP frameworks.

The Department complies with circular 05/2023 and uses a public tender for any procurement with a value over €50,000 excluding VAT. This threshold was increased from €25,000 during 2023 to facilitate SME participation. In accordance with Regulation 50, the Department publishes contract award notices on both the eTenders website (www.etenders.ie) and the Official Journal of the EU (OJEU) within 30 days of the award of the contract.