No printing contracts have been awarded by my Department to companies based outside the State.
In one case, a Dublin-based Irish publishing company, with whom my Department has a three-year contract (since January, 2008) for the production and distribution of a newsletter, has sub-contracted printing work in respect of five recent editions of that newsletter to a firm based in Northern Ireland. A small number of copies of a report published last year (200 out of 5,200) were also printed by the same firm, with the remainder printed by a company within the State.
The publishing company involved have stated that the selection of the printer is based on capacity issues and was conducted through a transparent tendering process open to companies in Ireland (North and South) as well as across Europe, which is in line with tendering procedures.