All take and no give on rates for city firms

A Galway office supplies company is paying €22,000 a year in rates to Galway City Council — but is prevented from selling even a single pen to the local authority.

“It’s madness,” said Galway West Independent TD Noel Grealish, who this week called for an overhaul of the rules governing public procurement.

“They are just a stone’s throw down the road from the offices of the City Council, they are paying them all this money, and yet they can’t get a penny back in sales,” he added.

“It’s happening all over the place. The National Roads Authority have taken on this policy now, that all the roads should go out in one contract, road maintenance and all that, and it’s gone to a Northern Ireland company.

“As a result, you now have a Northern Ireland company fitting cats eyes on the Tuam Road, between Tuam and Claregalway, when there are plenty of companies in Galway and around the western region well able to do this work.

“Why go to Northern Ireland, or the UK or anywhere else in Europe, when we have the expertise locally?”

Deputy Grealish said that the whole public procurement system had to be overhauled, “where you put the local company and local jobs first”.

“We can’t put up with the situation in Galway where you have companies who are paying thousands of euro in rates every year to the local council but they cannot sell a biro to them.

“With public procurement, it’s now inevitably done by an international company that supplies all the public offices, as in the city councils, the county councils, the government departments.

“All the schools are covered under this too. The national school, the secondary school, they cannot go to the local stationary shop to buy a biro or a ruler, they have to go through the public procurement system. It’s bureaucracy gone mad.

“You have articulated lorries coming down from Belfast on a Monday morning, supplying Galway County Council and Galway City Council, the hospital and everywhere else with all the stationery, driving past the doors of local companies who pay a fortune in local rates, taxes and charges.”

Deputy Grealish said that he had raised the issue previously with the Taoiseach during Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil, where the response was that centralised public procurement was used to save taxpayers’ money.

“But the reality is that this is actually costing the taxpayers money, because some of these local companies, unfortunately, have had to let go staff, because they weren’t able to tender for the contract,” he added.

He pointed out that France had found a way around the public procurement rules, which are largely laid down by the EU, by dividing the country into regions, with each keeping its spend below a certain level.

“We simply have to find some similar way out of this … one way or another, we must have a complete overhaul of the public procurement system, where we put local jobs first and end the current ridiculous situation,” said Deputy Grealish.