Public Procurement: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-29 ============================================================ Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland I find the Minister of State's opening statement surprising because some of the language used speaks to and seems to respond to an argument and discussion that I have been highlighting and moving forward for almost a decade in these Houses - the fact that under European procurement rules, value for money does not necessarily mean lowest price. Value for money can be lowest price, it can be the best balance of price and quality, and it can be life-cycle costing. The Minister of State spoke about the extraordinary amount - billions and billions - that is spent in procurement. The State is the largest customer in the State. The policy of having an integrated approach in terms of green, social and other considerations is a conversation I have been having with the Office of Government Procurement and the Department for years. The Minister of State supported my Bill in the Seanad along with his Government colleagues many of whom spoke in favour of it. Let us be crystal clear on what it did. The Bill provided that quality should be the default when thinking about both price and quality with procurement rather than going with price only. People can go with price but if they do so, they need to tell us why they have gone with price only. It required people to think about quality and give us an explanation on record as to why quality was not followed. The Bill also included the idea that very large, once-in-a-generation projects and major works worth over the EU threshold of fives and tens of millions would have a 50% quality threshold. It was a very common-sense proposal which was backed by the Construction Industry Federation, the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland and pretty much everybody we spoke to in procurement over a long period of time. It was backed by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael previously. However, it was voted down and then we had the rhetoric. I will go back to some of the reasons. When it was debated in the other House, having passed all Stages here in the Seanad and gone to the Dáil, the rationale we were given did not really add up. It was pointed out that we had moved only 12% to price only. That was a move from basically a quarter of all contracts going on price only that moved down during the period of time I engaged with the Minister of State's predecessor, Ossian Smyth. He issued circulars specifically asking for the approach specified in my Bill and asking that price-quality would be the preferred model. I am very aware that there was an improvement in practice. That was an improvement that I saw taking place in my regular meetings with the OGP and the Minister of State at that time. However, the problem was with the culture shift that the Minister of State referenced in his speech. For that to really happen, we needed to have something which specified an explanation was needed when going with price only. It is not that the Minister needs to explain - that was another thing suggested in the Minister of State's reply to the Chamber which is not accurate - it is that a senior officer would give an explanation. We need to think about what these contracts mean. The current approach is entirely discretionary, and it would remain discretionary, but there is not an explanation mechanism. I will give examples of what it means when we are going with lowest price only. The cervical check contract was on price only and that had very real consequences for women in the State. On the children's hospital, price was given a 75% weighting and quality was given only a 25% weighting. Even though the Minister of State has said that now about 80% of projects are going on quality criteria, what is the weighting? If it is less than 50%, price will automatically trump it based on whoever puts in the lowest number. We know the problems. That is why the Construction Industry Federation, the architects and all of these other groups backed the proposals in this Bill. When you have underbidding, you get subsequent claims, you get bad practices and you do not reward the companies that come in with realistic pricing, with quality they can deliver and with proper, decent treatment for their staff. They get penalised because of the advantage given to those who are willing to underbid, and who then deal with it in subsequent claims that drive up the cost indefinitely, as we have seen. When we look at the children's hospital, we see not just the costs but the errors that need to be corrected. We are now hearing about further corrective measures that need to be done in the children's hospital. Frankly, that is the approach the Minister of State has stuck with. He made the choice to stick with the model that can allow major projects in the fives, tens, 15s and 20s of millions to be given on a majority price-only basis rather than on a quality basis. The other rationale that was given was a misquoting about increased costs of 3%. That was the cost of the tender process. That is the cost of advertising and of reading it. The actual figures from the Netherlands showed that while there was an increase of less than 1% in certain costs with regard to contracts, there was a massive increase in benefits to the public - I think it was 7.5 or 17.5; I will look into the figures - when you put quality in it. That is because the Netherlands has been making quality the default. That is what my legislation was based on. I know officials from the Minister of State’s Department travelled there. I wonder why we are not delivering on that. Another rationale that was given was that a new directive is coming. We did not take full advantage of the 2014 directive, but now we are told that a new directive is coming. It will be negotiated during the Minister of State's watch. I am a little worried, because I was told that was why we could not go ahead and put quality into public procurement. May I ask what position Ireland will be taking in those negotiations on quality in public procurement? Is the Minister of State anticipating, expecting or hoping for a simplification that lessens the weighting and the focus on quality in public procurement? That is not what is in the narrative of his speech, but it is what is suggested by the unwillingness to commit to quality in advance of the new directive being negotiated. I would like to know what that position is. I come now to a few specific questions. There is discussion of more data. Will that include reporting in relation to the public duty on equality and human rights? This is a public duty that applies to all public bodies. They currently report in the context of the public duty in general, but it applies to procurement. It applies to what you spend the public’s money on. Right now, separate to reporting on the public duty, we do not have within procurement a reporting system that says how we delivered the public duty on equality and human rights when we did our procurement. That is even as we have heard that ethical considerations are immensely important to the public. I would like to know how the Minister of State plans for this to be reflected. How is he planning to monitor how the public duty in equality and human rights is being implemented in procurement, for example in terms of the ethics issues we have heard about with regard to those who are committing human rights violations or in areas that overlap with questions of security? I will give an example. Across Europe, we are seeing a move away from procurement with regard to Microsoft. The Italian military has moved off it. There have also been moves in Denmark and France. A huge number of public service areas are moving away from a company that testified in the French Senate that it will share our data with America. Here in the Oireachtas and in many Departments, we have changed our entire telephone system to be subject to and part of a company that, as we heard in testimony in the AI committee, is vulnerable to hacking. These are significant issues. These are massive public procurement issues and major contract issues. Yes, there are massive human rights and equality issues, but there are also crucial security issues. I would like the Minister of State to address that specific and large area of public procurement in the context of public security and how it is being addressed. I would like the Minister of State to answer those questions. I would like answers on his position going into these negotiations and explicitly on quality and on environmental factors. I would like to know where public duty, human rights and equality are going to be addressed in public procurement. I would like to know what he is going to do the next time there is a scandal. What is he going to do about weighting for major projects? Will it be 50% weighting? Is he going to bring in a measure to make that happen, or is he just going to hope it happens? I would also like explicit answers with regard to the security risks and exposure that has been flagged as a concern by many equivalent democracies across Europe. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-04-29/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:52+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-04-29