From the Galway City Tribune – Contractors that have failed to deliver on publicly-funded projects in the past are free to tender for future projects – and the City Council has no power to preclude them from winning another contract.

A meeting of the local authority was told last week that national legislation did not allow the Council to exclude any party from the tendering process, even if they had “a very poor track record”.

This came on foot of a motion from Cllr Colette Connolly (Ind) who said this, in effect, meant that developers could “get away with murder”.

“Restrictions should be looked at,” said the Independent councillor, as she called for those who had left the public purse out of pocket in the past to be banned from all future publicly funded projects.

Chief Executive Brendan McGrath said there “did not appear” to be any barrier along the lines of what was being sought.

In Cllr Connolly’s motion, seconded by Cllr Frank Fahy, she proposed that the City Council “write to the Department of Public Expenditure expressing our concern that a developer can submit a tender to local authorities despite previous history of not delivering and completing on previous tenders, and that restrictions on such developers would be looked at”.

Mr McGrath said while past performance could be taken into account in the marking system contractors in the tendering process, but a contract could not be refused definitively on that basis.

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“If, in the past, contractors have failed on previous contracts, that does not enable you to exclude that contractor from future projects,” said Mr McGrath.

Cllr Connolly said a change in legislation was required to ensure that the taxpayer was never again left picking up the tab for poor workmanship.

“It’s abhorrent that developers can get away with murder on various projects and it’s being paid for by the taxpayer,” she said.

The motion received the unanimous backing of councillors.