Albert Dolan (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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608. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if there are any technical, legal, operational, or policy constraints preventing his Department, when publishing quarterly reports of payments or purchase orders over €20,000, from including additional columns that link each payment to its underlying procurement process specifically tender/contract title; name and address of the awarded contractor/supplier; contract award date; contract duration; expected contract value (excl. VAT); maximum contract value (excl. VAT); the unique identifier from the relevant contract award notice; and where such constraints exist, to provide details explaining his Department’s current process for reconciling each reported payment with the corresponding published contract award notice on eTenders. [55062/25]

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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My Department maintains high standards in the management of the public funds entrusted to it and is fully committed to transparency, fairness and accountability in all its purchasing activities.

My Department publishes a range of procurement related information in accordance with the Freedom of Information Publication Scheme on its website at www.gov.ie/en/department-of-housing-local-government-and-heritage/organisation-information/procurement/, including an annual report of public contracts awarded over €25,000 (exclusive of VAT). Further procurement award information can be found on the eTenders website where, in accordance with Circular 05/2023, contracting authorities are required to publish contract award information for all procurement over €25,000 (exclusive of VAT), including any contract awarded under a Framework Agreement.

In the absence of interoperability between my Department’s financial management system and the eTenders platform, the inclusion of the suggested additional information in the quarterly reports of procurement related payments would require a prohibitive amount of time and staff resources to achieve.