Cork educational institutions breach national and EU spending laws 

University College Cork and the Cork Education and Training Board (ETB) spent a combined total of €3.5m outside of required procurement rules in 2023, documents have shown.

As public sector organisations, universities and ETBs must comply with national and EU public procurement laws. Expenditure is considered non-compliant if no competitive tender was run when required, if contracts were awarded without proper justification, or if documentation is missing.

In a letter to the Public Accounts Committee, UCC president John O’Halloran said the university was implementing a plan to reduce non-compliant expenditure.

“The university is fully committed to fulfilling its procurement obligations and, in that regard, has put an action plan in place to actively reduce non-compliant expenditure in a meaningful manner,” he said.

“This includes recently making an investment in a new contract management system to assist with managing the renewal and expiration of its contracts. In addition, we are in the process of recruiting an additional procurement resource. A procurement and purchasing subcommittee is also providing oversight.”

Mr O’Halloran submitted documentation outlining a breakdown of the €1,642,346.46 total non-compliant spend in 2023.

This includes €94,164.25 on ICT equipment supplies, €74,932.66 on electrical works, €163,552.97 on carpentry services, and €154,536 on taxation advisory services.

Printing services

Six different companies were paid out a total of €533,487.40 for sequencing services, while €352,542.01 was paid for printing services to two companies.

In most of the cases, the reason for non-compliance was listed as “cumulative low-value spend”, except in the case of €213,108.33 spent on waste management services, which was attributed to a delay with renewal of tender; and €36,022.84 for archival services, which was down to “residual transitional costs”.

Cork ETB chief executive Denis Leamy said: “Much of the non-compliant expenditure relates to instances where goods and services are procured locally across more than 100 Cork ETB locations.

“In each case, the required number of quotations were sought for each purchase and a purchase order was issued.

“The difficulty arises where the aggregate expenditure across all Cork ETB sites exceeds the national/EU tendering threshold and, at the time of purchase, Cork ETB had not tendered on an organisation-wide basis for these required goods and services.

“Aggregation, where the cumulative value of expenditure exceeds the threshold, is compounded by the number of schools and centres in a larger ETB. Cork ETB operates a decentralised purchasing system, where schools and centres raise their own purchase orders and submit invoices for payment to head office.”

Plan

Mr Leamy added that a Cork ETB annual corporate procurement plan sets out a schedule to conduct tendering processes for organisation-wide expenditure. He added that it is reviewed annually.

He also provided details on the €1,824,418.05 total non-compliant expenditure, which he noted had decreased €1,392,956.05 from the previous year.

The report detailed the amount paid out to suppliers, broken down by category, as well as details on how many orders and centres these related to, such as that one supplier who was paid out €61,859 for art and craft materials, but 167 orders were placed across 39 centres; or that €125,682 was paid to one supplier for site security and alarm call out responses/key holding, with 232 orders created across 43 centres. In total, 33 suppliers received these uncompliant payments.

Suppliers

This includes €357,211 to five suppliers for school/office furniture and photocopier and franking machine charges; €282,021 on cleaning services, split across 13 different suppliers; €112,006 for the purchase of hairdressing, nails and beauty products for courses from two different suppliers; and €132,422 to three travel agent suppliers for school tours and Erasmus programme travel.

Additionally, three suppliers were paid a cumulative €251,327 for engineering and welding consumables; €62,394 to one supplier for canteen food; €196,048 for electrical consumables/equipment for apprenticeship courses paid to two suppliers, and €243,448 for ICT/telecommunications paid to two suppliers.