Report looking into prison service procurement expected early in new year

hat contract was initially valued as worth €1.5m per year for four yea

An investigative report into the nature of procurement by the Irish Prisons Service, first commissioned early in 2020, will not be published until next year at the earliest.

The investigation by consultants EY was commenced in March 2020.

In May 2021, the secretary general of the Department of Justice told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) the report would be finalised before the end of 2021.

“The review is expected to be completed early in the new year,” a spokesperson for the Department of Justice told the Irish Examiner.

The EY investigation was first commissioned by the Department of Justice in March 2020 after a senior official in the prison service reported concerns regarding apparent procurement irregularities in the service’s contract with LMC FM, a facilities management company with offices in Dublin and Tipperary, dating from 2014.

That contract was initially valued as worth €1.5m per year for four years.

Last week, it emerged that the IPS had paid the same company some €5.6m in 2020 on foot of a new version of the facilities management contract for the service, despite the fact that an investigation had commenced into IPS’s prior dealings with the company.

That procurement had also been listed as in breach of public spending laws by the department, which require that an open competition be conducted for all Government contracts, and that contracts are strictly adhered to.

Asked why the contract had been deemed non-compliant, a spokesperson for the department said that the 2020 contract had been delayed following “engagement with multiple parties, including the OGP (Office of Government Procurement), the Chief State Solicitor’s Office and technical consultants”.

They said that the multimillion euro contract had been awarded to the same company, whose interaction with the State had prompted an as-yet-to-be-concluded investigation, as “the tender process and contract took on board the experience of the earlier contract and acknowledged that the scope of service could not be fully defined due to the demand-led nature of the service sought”.

“The contract in question was awarded in 2020 on foot of an open, EU-wide tender process, conducted by the Office of Government Procurement,” they added.

The senior official who prompted the EY investigation had previously told the PAC that he had requested of the prisons service in 2018 that the placing of work with LMC should be “paused pending investigation” but that this request “was ignored”.

LMC’s new contract with the IPS, awarded in July of 2020, is due to last seven years.