€2m Cork Education and Training Board spending didn’t follow guidelines

By Niall Murray, Education Correspondent

Up to €2m in goods and services were not procured in line with guidelines by Cork Education and Training Board last year.

The non-compliance with procurement rules included more than €1.75m spent by individual schools or colleges on a range of services which could have been tendered for centrally by the board.

But in its 2017 accounts just published, board chairman Cllr Patrick Gerard Murphy says chief executive Ted Owens has reported that full compliance will remain a challenge, given the nature of the organisation and the extent of spending under various categories.

A report by Mr Owens to Cork ETB’s audit committee six months ago said it can not meet all its responsibilities in respect of procurement regulations, despite ongoing work to ensure compliance with directives from Government departments, codes of governance and legal requirements.

Across more than 70 sites under CETB management, goods and services were procured locally in line with the board’s own policy. But the aggregated value across all the sites exceeded the national threshold of €25,000, above which full public tendering is required.

During 2017, €1.754m of spending was identified for which no aggregate tendering was undertaken, including amounts spent locally on school bus hire, school meals, fire equipment, printing, class and course materials, security, managed print services, and IT support services and equipment. CETB is to prioritise these areas for aggregated procurement this year and it said a framework is now in place from the Office of Government Procurement for the purchase of school books, for which €225,000 was spent last year while a tender process was awaited.

The board spent €187m last year, almost two thirds of it to pay 3,829 employees, providing education and training to more than 46,000 people at 30 primary and second-level schools, and in further education, adult education and training courses.

An internal control statement in the 2017 accounts also says that part of a further €150,000 of spending that did not comply with procurement guidelines related to urgent work to get two education facilities ready to open by last September, and agency staff who were needed longer than was initially expected.

In an accompanying report, Comptroller & Auditor General Seamus McCarthy notes the concerns disclosed in the statement on internal control about the adequacy of internal audit resources available to CETB last year. These were to be addressed through extra staff in a centralised internal audit unit covering all 16 ETBs.

Similar concerns were expressed in 2017 accounts also just published by Longford and Westmeath ETB.

It reported that a review of procurement last year found nearly €1.2m was spent on 2017 on goods and services procured by obtaining quotes rather than in an aggregated manner. This included €366,000 for books, buses and legal services, which have since been procured by aggregated tendering, and over €600,000 on categories for which tendering was in progress when the accounts were signed off in July.