Ken O'Flynn (Cork North-Central, Independent Ireland Party)
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621. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform if he will provide details of the conflict of interest, related party disclosure, and recusal protocols currently in place for special advisers appointed under the Public Service Management Act 1997 and other relevant legislation; the procedures by which advisers are required to declare any immediate or extended family connections to companies or entities in receipt of State contracts; the way in which such declarations are recorded, monitored, and audited; the number of instances since 1 January 2023 in which a recusal or reassignment of duties has occurred on conflict-of-interest grounds; and if he will make available anonymised statistical data on compliance with these requirements for each of the years from 2023 to date in 2025. [45140/25]

Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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Along with other elected and appointed public officials, the special advisers to whom the Deputy refers are subject to, and have a range of obligations under, our national framework for ethics in public life: the Ethics in Public Office Act 1995 and the Standards in Public Office Act 2001 (collectively known as the Ethics Acts).

Specifically, special advisers are obliged under section 19 of the 1995 Act to submit both annual and occasional statements of interests. Annual statements of interests cover interests of the person concerned and of his/her spouse or civil partner and of their children. These are interests that could materially influence the person concerned in or in relation to the performance of his/her functions. Among those interests are contracts for the supply of goods or services to a Minister of the Government or a public body whose value exceeds €6,500.

A special adviser is required to send his/her annual statements of interests to the office holder to whom he/she is acting as a special adviser and to the Standards in Public Office Commission (SIPO). The office holder is required to lay statements of the special adviser’s own interests before both Houses of the Oireachtas. Where a special adviser has no interests which are required to be disclosed in respect of any year, there is no statutory requirement to submit a statement of nil interests. However, SIPO strongly recommends that a nil statement be submitted in those circumstances.

Occasional statements of interest cover any material interest in a matter that relates to a function that falls to be performed. In these circumstances, the special adviser must not perform the function in question unless there are compelling reasons requiring him or her to do so. These statements must also be sent to the relevant office holder and to SIPO. Special advisers must also undertake not to engage in any occupation that might reasonably be seen to be capable of interfering or being incompatible with the performance of their official functions.

Further details of these obligations and the associated procedures are provided by SIPO in Part 5 of its Guidelines on compliance with the provisions of the Ethics in Public Office Acts 1995 and 2001.

While the Ethics Acts make no statutory provision for review of statements of interests, in the case of possible contraventions of the Acts, a complaint may be made to SIPO.

According to information furnished to my Department by SIPO, the numbers of statements of interests and statements of nil interests received from special advisers in 2023, 2024 and to date in 2025 are as follows:

Ken O'Flynn (Cork North-Central, Independent Ireland Party)
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622. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform if he will provide details of the controls and due diligence processes applied by the Office of Government Procurement and individual contracting authorities to identify and manage potential high-risk related party connections in the award of public contracts, particularly in sensitive policy areas such as migration and asylum accommodation; if these processes include systematic cross checking of beneficial ownership registers, special adviser declarations, and lobbying returns; the criteria by which a contract is designated for enhanced scrutiny; the number of cases since 1 January 2023 in which red flag findings were escalated to the Standards in Public Office Commission or the Comptroller and Auditor General; and if he will make publicly available anonymised annual statistics on the incidence and management of such cases. [45141/25]

Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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My Department has published the Public Procurement Guidelines for Goods and Services to provide a comprehensive interpretation of the public procurement regulations, S.I. No. 284/2016 - European Union (Award of Public Authority Contracts) Regulations 2016. These guidelines advise that contracting authorities are required to take appropriate measures to prevent, identify and remedy conflicts of interest in the conduct of a procurement procedure to avoid any distortion of competition and to ensure equal treatment of tenderers.

My Department has also made available a suite of template tender documents, developed in conjunction with the Office of the Chief State Solicitor. These templates explicitly state that any conflict of interest or potential conflict of interest on the part of a tenderer, subcontractor or individual employee(s) or agent(s) of a tenderer or subcontractor(s) must be fully disclosed to the contracting authority as soon as the conflict or potential conflict is or becomes apparent. These templates also require any registrable interest involving any tenderer or subcontractor and the contracting authority, members of the Government, members of the Oireachtas, or employees and officers of the contracting authority and their relatives must be fully disclosed in the tender or, in the event of this information only coming to the notice of the tenderer or subcontractor after the submission of a tender, must be communicated to the contracting authority immediately upon such information becoming known to the tenderer or subcontractor.

The Office of Government Procurement, a Division within my Department, operates as a Central Purchasing Body (CPB) establishing Framework Agreements and Dynamic Purchasing Systems for commonly required goods and services. The OGP has established 83 such solutions. The OGP has not established any central procurement solution in sensitive policy areas such as migration and asylum accommodation, nor has it any plans to do so.

In line with the Public Procurement Guidelines for Goods and Service, the OGP takes appropriate measures to prevent, identify and remedy conflicts of interest in the conduct of its procurement competitions, and appropriate measures to avoid any distortion of competition and ensuring equal treatment of tenderers. Such measures being appropriate to the relevant competition and the relevant market. All OGP’s Frameworks and Dynamic Purchasing Systems are contracted on the template tender documents and contracts developed in conjunction with the Office of the Chief State Solicitor.

Since OGP was established, there has been no requirement to escalate any competition, Framework Agreement or Dynamic Purchasing System to the Standards in Public Office Commission or the Comptroller and Auditor General