I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Feighan, for being here as he has responsibility for the area of procurement. I thank Senator Alice-Mary Higgins for her work on this legislation. Senator Higgins has worked for the past eight years on this specific legislation. Her commitment to the area of procurement stretches back to before she was elected to the Seanad, however, to her time in civil society when she recognised, as so many others have done, that the issue of procurement has such a wide-reaching impact and effect on so many other areas of how we work in the public sector and that it needs improvement. What is at the core of this Bill is that public procurement is decided essentially on the criterion of lowest cost only. It is the default mechanism by which public procurement is decided. This Bill seeks to introduce quality as a much stronger criterion. It does not abandon lowest cost but recognises fully that is a hugely important factor in the process. It introduces quality as a measure which should be included in the process. This is all doable within the directives and legislation in any case but, unfortunately, it is not the custom in the design of our procurement processes. That is what we are seeking to address. I thank Senator Alice-Mary Higgins for all her work in bringing the Bill to this Stage. It has been through all Stages in the Seanad and now comes to the Dáil on Second Stage, ready to go to the finance committee if I can convince the Government to reverse its decision to oppose this Bill. I am really proud to build on the work that Senator Higgins has done and bring it to the Dáil floor. Before I talk about the details and provisions of the Bill and plead again to the Government to support us in bringing this legislation through to the next Stage, I will talk about procurement more broadly, what it means and why it is such an important part of all of our lives. Procurement is very far-reaching and covers everything we buy as a State. As a party, we were trying to figure out how to make procurement sexy, and I do not know if we can, but one way of trying to help people understand it a bit better is that it is basically how the State does shopping. It is how it goes out and buys and purchases things, be those services or goods. We are all very familiar with the big projects and the scandals, essentially, that have hit this Government over the last number of terms. They include the national children's hospital, CervicalCheck, the hot school meals programme recently, and in so many different areas. Having listened to previous Topical Issue debate, which was raised by Deputy Doherty, it sounds as if procurement is at the heart of another issue that has been raised on the Dáil floor. Procurement also reaches into many of the smaller things. I have worked in the public sector and I have been an Accounting Officer in a State agency, so I am very familiar with the procurement process and how deep it is in the heart of every public sector body. It is an area of expertise within public sector bodies and it is important that we empower people who procure on behalf of this State to count not just price in the design of their criteria but also introduce quality. Besides the big examples I gave, I will introduce some smaller ones that people might not be as familiar with or might not remember. One that I will mention is the contract for library books back in 2012. A contract drawn up at that stage essentially excluded smaller providers from bidding within the contract structure. Ultimately, the contract went to a UK company. This decision gutted bookshops across the nation. There were a huge number of lay-offs and closures. A bookshop in Sandyford in my constituency had to close down as a result. One of the bookshop owners said: What galls me the most is the tender notice stated candidates should have access to, and experience of, dealing with small, local publishers and authors and have in-depth of the Irish publishing scene. I fail to see how a UK chain would have any knowledge of little known publishers in Ireland. This decision was made purely on price and it is really short-sighted. This has been happening for many years. The example I cited was raised with me when I spoke with the Minister's colleague, Deputy Lahart. When I spoke about this process, he immediately came back to me with an example. That has been my experience because I have been talking about this to many colleagues over the past two weeks. They all have examples of how the current procurement process has failed us and how they see the value in this legislation. Another example we have discussed was one that came from a carer who talked about the fact that the HSE provide for her, in the provision of her work, incontinence pads, which she then uses on her clients. She said because the HSE switched providers, she had to start changing incontinence pads for her patients four times a day instead of twice a day because the quality of the product dropped with the new provider. I genuinely cannot think of a more human example of how public procurement reaches into the depths and intimacy of our lives than that exact example. For that patient and client, it means that twice as many times a day and twice as many times across her life, she has to experience the discomfort of having that incontinence pad changed. That seems like such a small example but for somebody in that situation, it is a mammoth way in which her life has changed. Let us have a look at the numbers when we talk about procurement because Ireland plans to spend €275.4 billion in the next five years under the national development plan. We know that is already in addition to the €19 billion a year we spend on public procurement. This is so wide-reaching. I will now talk about the provisions because, as I mentioned, this is about shifting the culture of how public procurement is done from one that values cost only to one that should value quality. The key provisions and sections in this Bill are sections 3 and 4, which outline exactly how quality should be considered within the procurement process and that when quality is not a consideration, how those exceptions should be applied. We fully appreciate and acknowledge that there are times when lowest cost only is a metric which is applicable to a particular procurement process. This was very much a piece of work that Senator Higgins did in reshaping the legislation to say we want you to think about quality and if you are not thinking about quality, you need to explain why not. There is a mechanism by which you have to raise up the flag pole of any public sector body why you are not thinking about quality and you have deemed that this process should be based on lowest cost only. That is exactly the kind of accommodation that we seek to see when we are developing this kind of legislation, and in response to Government concerns when it was going through the Seanad and in her interactions with the Office of Government Procurement, OGP. I should add, by the way, that this has been done in consultation with the OGP throughout these eight years of work and, indeed, with the co-operation of the Office of Parliamentary Legal Advisers, OPLA, in the development of the legislation itself. Sections 5 and 6 then go on to deal with certain other elements. The public sector duty was introduced into the State in 2014. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission Act 2014 sets out that public bodies have to have regard for human rights and equality in the work that they do. Section 5 allows for this to be a part of the procurement reporting process. Section 6 also emphasises that social consideration should be another part of it. It is a simple Bill. It is a straightforward Bill. It is a Bill that is essentially in response to the 2014 directives that determined how Ireland would go about its procurement and how every member state, indeed, would go about procurement. Unfortunately, in that instant, Ireland chose to interpret it in such a way that led us to this default situation of lowest cost only, and this legislation seeks to correct exactly that. We are lucky because we have a Dutch experience where this type of legislation has been introduced and we have really strong data which captures what happened there. What we see in that Dutch example is that 73% of the contracts still go to lowest cost only. We are not trying to say that it should not be that big a feature. We know that it is, but we want to make sure it allows us to take account of the quality criteria as well. Within that Dutch model, the other important figure is that they found that there was a 3% increase in the procurement process costs - not in the projects themselves; let us be clear on that - which is a marginal one, and there was a 2.4 times equivalent benefit reported by those actors. I will conclude and pass over to my colleagues to talk about specific examples in this area by pleading with the Minister of State to support this Bill and reverse the Government's decision to oppose it. Any concerns the Minister of State has about money - I am pre-empting what he might say in his contribution - can be dealt with on Committee Stage or the money message process. Any concerns the Minister of State has about those finance considerations can be dealt with there. What I want to see is the Minister of State putting his money where his mouth is in terms of saying that he wants us to offer solutions and that he wants to work with us because I could not find a clearer example of exactly that. I plead with the Minister of State to support it.

Sentiment score: 0.09

No, there is five more minutes.

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Yes, I did ask.

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I thank Deputies Ahearn, Boyd Barrett and O'Reilly for their contributions. This whole experience of bringing forward the Bill, talking to countless colleagues across the Government and Opposition benches over recent weeks and then coming to the House to receive the news that the Government is not going to support it makes me, as a new TD, so sad. I hear every day from the leaders of the Minister of State's party and its coalition partner that we do not offer solutions and that the Government engages constructively. This Bill is the result of eight years of constructive engagement, inside this House and outside. It was brought to the Government as a solution and its answer is, "No, thanks." I am genuinely sad that I am faced with that. I am a legislator. I was elected to be a legislator. This is legislation that addresses a very real problem that we all acknowledge and the Government is saying, "No, thanks". I am going to go through some of the details. Some of details of the Minister of State's response are problematic and completely ill-informed. I will start with the children's hospital. It seems to me that the Minister of State is saying that the Government is happy for the model to continue that allowed the decision for the children's hospital project to go the way it did because the cost was considered at 75% within the procurement matrix. This Bill would bring quality to 50%. Is the Minister of State okay with that? Two days ago, the Minister of State's colleague the Minister for Health engaged with my colleague Deputy Rice. When asked if the contract was fundamentally flawed, the Minister said that we would not take that step again. She said that the contractual structure is not one we would approach or adopt again. This Bill does exactly what she is asking. Two days after she spoke, the Bill is available to the Government on the Dáil of the floor. The Government says we do not offer solutions and do not want to work collaboratively. That is what I am doing today and this is the response I get. It takes the wind out of my sails, as a new TD, to get this kind of response. It is depressing. I will go through some of the misinformation that I have identified within the Minister of State's contribution. The Dutch figure has been misconstrued. The increase of 3% is in the procurement process, not in the projects. The figure of €10 billion is just wrong. The actual increase, which was shown in other research from Utrecht, which is perhaps where the Minister of State is getting this from, was 1%. As other colleagues have pointed out, that 1% increase in cost must be compared with the trade-off involved in losing quality and life-cycle costs. The actual value for money overall is bolstered by bringing in quality. It is not diminished, which is what the Minister of State's whole contribution seemed to say. The Government says it wants value for money. This Bill would bring value for money. It is achievable within the framework of the most economically advantageous tender. We chose, as a member state, to interpret it in a completely restrictive manner. All this Bill would do is address that. To say it is premature when it is in response to a 2014 directive, which was 12 years ago, is insane. It has taken us this long to get the legislation to the floor of the Dáil. It took work to get it through the Seanad, where colleagues of the Minister of State who will vote against it next Wednesday spoke in favour of it. Deputy Malcolm Byrne, who was then a Senator, spoke in favour of it. I have the quote here. He will shortly to vote against it. What changed between 2022 and 2025? He spoke in favour of it. The Government spoke in favour of it. I ask the Minister of State to tell me why we should now decide that this is not the way to go. I want to pick up on another factual piece. The Minister of State talked about the ministerial oversight that is sought when cost-only is required. That is an out-of-date response. It was in one of the earlier drafts of the legislation. That is exactly what I was talking about. Senator Higgins addressed that in this newer 2022 draft. The updated Bill stated a requirement for a senior figure in the organisation, which means it will not have to go to ministerial level. That is another point I wanted to address. The Minister of State referenced the progress that has been made in this space. I fully acknowledge that progress has been made. Circulars have been issued. It is referenced in the national strategy for collective bargaining as a pilot. All of that is the result of the work of Senator Higgins. It is because she has been engaging with the OGP and officials in the Minister of State's Department. That is why this is happening. This legislation would put it on a statutory footing and give clarity to everyone. That would allow us, as a member state, to say that we are progressive in our procurement and that we are recognising the social and ethical considerations that should be a part of the procurement process. Going back to the point about value for money, this Bill would allow for better decision-making that embraces value for money. The Minister of State said that it contradicts the Government's aim of supporting local and indigenous businesses, but he is wrong. That is exactly what it will do. As I said earlier, I have done this. I have designed and overseen procurement processes as part of the development and running of a State agency. I can say that because the culture is lowest cost only, the hands of the people in the procurement process are tied. They come to the decision-making process and see someone coming in who they know is problematic but they have to give them the contract because they have low-balled. That is what happens. The Minister of State talks about freedom. The freedom in the existing process is a fallacy. This Bill would empower people to introduce social and ethical considerations. That is a side aspect. The main thing it allows is the rewarding of good behaviour. It would reward good performers who will provide quality contracts to the State. That is what the Bill would allow for. It would not tie people's hands. It would untie them. I also want to reference the example of CervicalCheck, which was touched on a couple of times. I do not think it has been shared that the Scally report, which was an independent review of the CervicalCheck scandal and the screening programme, identified an overemphasis on obtaining the lowest cost from suppliers without equivalent emphasis on other quality and service-level measures as a key concern. That is a human cost of a poor procurement process. The independent expert is telling us that it is because we could not consider quality in the process. We have the big-money scandal of the children's hospital. We have the tragic human scandal of CervicalCheck. Numerous examples have been outlined today, and yet this Government continues to oppose the legislation. I think I know where the heart of the Government's objection lies. At the beginning of his speech the Minister of State referenced there being an increase in the level of bureaucracy and competition. He also said it seemed the entire Bill was premature. What is actually going on is the Minister of State and the Government are buying in to the current European vision for simplification and harmonisation. They are the two words I hear again and again. I am hearing them in relation to AI and the digital omnibus package travelling through the EU at the moment. We hear it about the occupied territories Bill. We hear about simplification and harmonisation all the time. One of the Minister of State's colleagues mentioned relieving the regulatory burden to me last week, though I cannot remember what it was in relation to. This is a better way to do procurement but, according to the simplification agenda, the Minister of State suggests it is about increasing regulation. That is my issue. I suspect what the Government wants is deregulation. It wants to embrace this drive to the bottom and this abandonment of the European Union standards we all hold dear and cherish as citizens of the Union. That is the agenda that is being promoted and which this Government is buying into hook, line and sinker. It does not make me anti-European to say that. We are one of 27 member states. I had a brief exchange on this with the Minister for public expenditure and reform last night and he told me this is not in line. The Minister of State has said the same and that, basically, these discussions are happening. I do not buy that for a second anyway because those discussions and negotiations will take years, meaning the Government could implement this legislation and then deal with anything else further down the line. As such, I do not buy it time-wise. When it comes to ethos and principles, however, if the Government knows simplification is coming and that it will ultimately drop the standards and quality of the procurement process in this State, it should not be rushing to conform to it. The Government, on behalf of the Irish people, should be pushing against it with all its might. That is what this Bill does. The Government should go back to the table and say Ireland has introduced quality into the process and it has been beneficial to the State, rather than waiting for the EU to tell it to drop it altogether. That is the saddest part of all this. In his response the Minister of State tried to pick things out and used examples that are ill-informed, poorly packaged and show me he does not understand what this Bill attempts to do. Underlying this is that the Government is hell-bent on the agenda of simplification, which in other words is deregulation. This Bill does not sit with that and that is why the Government is going to resist it. That is what has changed between 2022 and 2025. Like Deputy O'Reilly, I urge the Minister of State to bring this back to the Minister, Deputy Chambers. I will continue to talk to the Minister of State's colleagues. I have talked to so many of them over the last two weeks who looked at the Bill and said it was a great idea and asked why we are not doing this already. I will continue to do that until the vote next Wednesday and I am going to look all of them in the eye when they vote against it.

Sentiment score: 0.06