The Office of Government Procurement (OGP) has received very few queries specifically on the inclusion of social and environmental criteria in procurement contracts, relative to other aspects of public procurement. However, questions from contracting authorities at the wide range of events in which OGP officials facilitate (Procurement Officer Network meetings, Procurement Client Conference, Procurex, Category Councils, circular economy and sustainability conferences…) show much interest amongst contracting authorities more broadly in the areas of green and socially responsible public procurement.
The Green Public Procurement (GPP) Criteria Search online tool was developed by the OGP with collaboration from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications (DECC), to facilitate use of the GPP criteria published by the EPA. These GPP criteria are environmental criteria. The GPP Criteria Search tool was visited over 14,000 times in the nine months following its launch in early November 2022.
Circular 20/2019: Promoting the use of Environmental and Social Considerations in Public Procurement states that queries in relation to the development and implementation of Green Public Procurement, the annual reporting templates, and related guidance can be sent to the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment (now DECC).
Compliance with the green, social and other horizontal policy requirements rests with individual public bodies. The OGP does not have the capability to monitor the use of social and environmental criteria in tender competitions by individual contracting authorities.
However, for green public procurement, each Government Department is required to monitor and report upon its own use, in order to publish this in its Annual Report, as required under Circular 20/2019. The EPA monitors the use of GPP in procurement across Government Departments. To date, the EPA has published two reports on GPP by Government Departments, one for contracts signed in 2020 and one for contracts signed in 2021. These show the percentage of contracts (of over €25,000), both by value and by number, that the Government Departments class as GPP. The latest report is publicly available on the EPA’s Green Public Procurement webpage. The reporting template issued to Government Departments by the EPA is also available on this webpage. The EPA has commenced the process of surveying Government Departments on their use of GPP in contracts signed in 2022, and will similarly publish a report amalgamating results across Departments for that year.
The Government's Climate Action Plan 2023 introduced a revised Public Sector Climate Action Mandate that includes a commitment to implementation of GPP. Public bodies report on implementation of the different aspects of the Mandate to the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI). Climate Action Roadmaps set out how they will implement the Mandate. The SEAI recently updated its guidance on completing the Roadmap, recommending that public bodies set up a system to gather and record data on GPP implementation within the organisation, using the reporting template issued by the EPA to Government Departments as a reference.
The OGP and its partner Central Purchasing Bodies in Health, Education, Local Government and Defence record the inclusion of green criteria in their central purchasing arrangements, and collectively report this to the Procurement Executive and in the published annual report of the interim Procurement Reform Board.
