Public Procurement Contracts

Thursday, 17 July 2025

Questions (353)

Albert Dolan

Question:

353. Deputy Albert Dolan asked the Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport further to Parliamentary Question Nos. 329 and 331 of 24 June 2025, to the Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, which confirmed that responsibility for analysing collapsed or re-run procurement competitions rests with individual contracting authorities, if his Department has estimated or recorded the number of procurement competitions since 2019 that did not result in a contract award due to insufficient submissions, legal challenges, disqualification of bidders, or internal cancellation, recorded or estimated the administrative or financial cost associated with collapsed or re-run procurement competitions during the same period and undertaken any analysis on the underlying reasons for failed competitions and the extent to which outcomes might be improved through better planning, clearer specifications, earlier market engagement, or other procurement reforms; and if not, if his Department will now consider putting in place such monitoring systems, in light of the administrative cost and service delays associated with failed procurement procedures. [40387/25]

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Written answers

Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport

The details sought by the Deputy for the functions under the remit of my Department in the period since September 2020 (when the former Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media was established) are set out in the table below.

It should be noted that my Department was re-configured as the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport at the beginning of June 2025.

Year	Procurement Competition	Reason Contract Not Awarded	Financial Cost
2021	Tender for provision of in-house Legal Support for the National Broadband Plan	No submissions were received.	Unknown
2023	Exhibition Interpretation, Design and Project Management Services – Records of the State Exhibition	No suitable replies were received. The specifications were amended and the competition was re-run.	Nil
2024	Procurement of an Operator of the National Emergency Call Answering Service	All tenders, requests to participate or projects were withdrawn or found inadmissible.	Unknown
2025	Exhibition Design and Project Management Services for the National Archives’ 1926 Census Exhibition in Dublin, London (UK) and Boston (US).	No suitable replies were received. The specifications were amended and the competition was re-run.	Nil

My Department is committed to achieving value for money in the procurement of goods and services essential to support its work in providing high quality service to the public in a cost effective and efficient manner. Accordingly, my Department engages fully with initiatives of the Office of Government Procurement (OGP) focusing especially on achieving savings, including the use of shared framework agreements for a range of supplies and service, where applicable.

My Department operates a number of controls and procedures in relation to procurement and contracts largely informed by Public Procurement Guidelines published by the OGP which performs a key role in helping the State to save money when buying goods and services.