Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein)
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18. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the number of contracts to provide services and or consultancy to his Department that have been granted without having to go to public tender; the companies that were granted these contracts and the nature of the works involved; and the qualifying criteria that were applied to any company awarded such a contract in 2024. [46305/24]

Micheál Martin (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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The Department of Foreign Affairs is responsible for two Votes - Vote 27 (International Cooperation) and Vote 28 (Foreign Affairs).

The policy of the Department is to operate competitive tendering as standard procedure in order to achieve best value for money. Procurement takes place in the context of Directive 2014/24/EU and supported by Procurement Guidelines published by the Office of Government Procurement (OGP).

It is important to note that consultancy and service contracts awarded without a competitive process are not necessarily non-compliant with public procurement regulations. Examples of the exceptions provided for include sole supplier scenarios, proprietary services, where specialist knowledge resource changes cannot be made for economic or technical reasons or where genuine urgency or staff safety is a factor.

The Department participates fully in on-going initiatives of the Office of Government Procurement (OGP) focusing especially on achieving procurement savings, including the use of shared framework agreements for the provision of different categories of supplies and services.

The information requested for 2024 is not yet available.