Ireland – Payroll management services – Voluntary Ex Ante Transparency Notice (VEAT) in respect of the proposed award of a contract to a designated supplier for the provision of payroll software services to the Houses of the Oireachtas Service

The Houses of the Oireachtas Service, a statutory parliamentary support service under Irish law that supports the work of the Houses of the Oireachtas (Irish National Parliament), gives notice of its intention to invoke Article 32(2)(b)(ii) of Directive 2014/24/EU, that is to say: ‘The negotiated procedure without prior publication may be used for public works contracts, public supply contracts and public service contracts in any of the following cases...where the works, supplies or services can be supplied only by a particular economic operator for any of the following reasons...competition is absent for technical reasons....’ as elaborated on by Recital 50 to that Directive, and effect to which is given in Irish law by Regulation 32(2)(b)(ii) of the European Union (Award of Public Authority Contracts) Regulations 2016, Statutory Instrument No. 284 of 2016, in the making of the following award without a competitive tender process. That proposed award is of an 18-month payroll software contract to Access Workspace Ireland Limited (“Access”), a company incorporated under the law of Ireland bearing company registration no. 91755, and having its registered address at 3rd Floor, Building 2000, Citygate, Mahon, County Cork, T12 K06Y, Ireland. Specifically, competition is absent for the following technical reasons, namely that the payroll software from Access, which has interfaces to internal systems that also interface with external systems, is uniquely integrated with the Houses of the Oireachtas pension calculation and financial management systems, and is highly customised to the Houses of the Oireachtas environment.