Limerick Fine Gael TD, Patrick O’Donovan has raised the issue of Kilfinane National School in the Dáil, where he called on the Minister for Education to introduce stricter criteria for the selecting of contractors undertaking work in public buildings. Patrick O’Donovan said that the Government’s capital program had a commitment to provide an extra 80,000 new school places to accommodate new schools and extensions to existing ones, but that the recent developments in Kilfinane showed how weak the tendering process is.
Patrick O’Donovan asked that the Department of Education to introduce a more robust due diligence system of background checks to determine if contractors had previous issues with the management of pay of subcontractors. He also said that a level of retention should be kept back at the end of the project until the Department, or the relevant public body, had satisfied itself that those sub-contractors that had worked on the site had been paid and were up to date. The Limerick deputy also asked if the Government would consider special banking arranegements where payments relating to particular projects only could be paid from.
Patrick O’Donovan said that it was clear that this is not an isolated incident, and he knew of other Co. Limerick schools, and other public contracts where subcontractors had had issues like this, and where the same main contractors was still being considered, and in some cases awarded the lowest contract. Patrick O’Donovan told the Dáil that it is not the case that the cheapest is the best, and that the Department and other state agencies would have to give a greater role to local quantity surveyors.
He said in this case it was important that the pupils, who had waited long enough, could enjoy their future in the school and that the parents, managers and staff could be sure that this was the case. He added that the State also had a duty to protect sub-contractors from events like this and he would be pursuing the matter with the Government.