13. Deputy Albert Dolan asked the Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation Digitisation if he will consider instructing Departments and bodies under his remit to include an additional column in their published purchase order reports to indicate the specific contract under which each payment is made; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40546/26]

Sentiment score: 0.01

Will the Minister consider instructing Departments and bodies under his remit to include an additional column in their published purchase order reports to indicate the specific contract under which each payment is made? From a purchase order report, I can see who was paid, how much they were paid and when they were paid but I cannot see what they were paid for. The only way we can do that is by linking it back to the original contract.

Sentiment score: 0.11

I thank the Minister for his work in writing to all the State bodies to remind them of their obligation under the EU open data directive that they have to publish their purchase orders in machine-readable format. To give the Minister an example, Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII, the children's hospital and the Arts Council were not publishing but once he wrote to them, this ensured that they did start publishing. We had written to them as well. The Minister will be aware of my work with my team in collating all the information to get over €100 billion in procurement spend tracked over the past decade. It goes back to the fundamental point that the State can tell us that a payment was made but it is not easy to see which contract authorised it. Some entities and some suppliers have multiple contracts with multiple State entities and it is actually really difficult to see exactly what they were doing or what they provided. For Ministers and for everyone to be able to assess what value was actually provided, we need to know which contract underpinned that spend. That is where I am going with this and that is where that additional column needs to come in.

Sentiment score: 0.01

The Office of Government Procurement stopped centrally collecting procurement spend data in 2019 citing general data protection regulation, GDPR, concerns and six years later, nothing has replaced it. The Department is estimating its procurement spend using estimated tender values on eTenders, not actual expenditure data. I believe this is a structural governance problem and a very practical step is adding one additional column to published purchase order reports identifying the relevant contract reference or contract award notice. It sounds small but it would be transformative. It would begin creating that golden thread from tender to contract award to payment because public money should be traceable from beginning to end. I will say this plainly: we cannot govern a system that we cannot see. I greatly appreciate anything the Minister can do in this regard. This is an opportunity to provide a greater level of transparency and I know the Minister is committed to that as well.

Sentiment score: 0.29