Albert Dolan (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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268. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment further to Parliamentary Question Nos. 329 and 331 of 24 June 2025, to the Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, which confirmed that responsibility for analysing collapsed or re-run procurement competitions rests with individual contracting authorities, if his Department has estimated or recorded the number of procurement competitions since 2019 that did not result in a contract award due to insufficient submissions, legal challenges, disqualification of bidders, or internal cancellation, recorded or estimated the administrative or financial cost associated with collapsed or re-run procurement competitions during the same period and undertaken any analysis on the underlying reasons for failed competitions and the extent to which outcomes might be improved through better planning, clearer specifications, earlier market engagement, or other procurement reforms; and if not, if his Department will now consider putting in place such monitoring systems, in light of the administrative cost and service delays associated with failed procurement procedures.; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40390/25]

Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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My Department operates a devolved procurement function whereby each business unit and Office of the Department is responsible for the procurement of their own goods, services and related contracts, with corporate oversight via a Procurement Co-ordination Unit, headed at Principal Officer level.

The Procurement Co-ordination Unit assists and advises internal business units and our Offices on a range of procurement matters so as to ensure that there is an appropriate focus on procurement best practice. The Department is also guided by various national and international (EU) procurement rules and guidelines.

My Department, for the vast majority of its procurements, will try to avail of various centralised procurement frameworks put in place by the Office of Government Procurement (OGP) as well as utilising the e-Tenders website and advertising in the EU Journal, where applicable.

My Department does maintain a central contracts register for signed contracts. Under our devolved procurement model, Business Units and the Offices of the Department are required to update the Register upon the signing of a contract and enter the specific details of the contract. The register is administered by my Department’s Procurement Co-ordination Unit.

Due to the devolved procurement model in operation in my Department we do not currently hold centralised data on procurement competitions that did not result in a contract award due to insufficient submissions, legal challenges, disqualification of bidders, or internal cancellation. Likewise, we do not have centralised data on the estimated administrative or financial cost associated with collapsed or re-run procurement competitions or the underlying reasons for failed competitions.

My Department is currently in the process of upgrading its contracts register. As part of this upgrade the Department will consider putting in place possible monitoring systems whereby collapsed or re-run procurement competitions incur significant and identifiable administrative costs and service delays and may assist with any future analysis on the underlying reasons for failed competitions and the extent to which outcomes might be improved upon.