The public sector spends substantial amounts of money procuring goods and services. The public that ultimately finances all this massive expenditure needs to have trust that the money is being used effectively.

The recently-published Contracts Department’s report for 2016 includes, for the first time, comments on the work of the Commercial Sanctions Tribunal.

The headline news of the tribunal’s activity report is that, so far, “no private company has been blacklisted from taking part in public procurement”. Considering that the tribunal was set up in 2015 to combat precarious employment, this is positive news, provided, this is not the result of some ‘oversight’.

Precarious employment is a scourge that afflicts society now and will affect it more in the future. The exploitation of workers with low skills is a sad reality that most countries face. It is important for governments to ensure that, among other things, they do not encourage this practice by awarding contracts financed by taxpayers to companies that try to maximise profits by offering their workers precarious work conditions.

But public procurement practices cover other areas where scrutiny, accountability and transparency are of primary importance. Last year, the Contracts Department received 125 appeals with their value amounting to €109 million. Is this statistic a cause of concern?

The OECD warns that public procurement is the government activity most vulnerable to corruption. Lack of transparency and accountability are recognised as a major threat to integrity in public procurement in many countries.

Various practices may contaminate the procurement process despite the often bureaucratic checks and balances the official regulations may contain. These could include product or service specifications in the invitation to tender that are tailor made for a particular supplier. Or the award of direct orders that on paper appear to be within the parameter of procurement rules but which in reality favour a given bidder.

Large public contracts may often include clauses where the government binds private contractors not to release information about the contracts. Requests under the Freedom of Information Act are regularly rejected or crucial information removed, making it very difficult for the public to hold the government and the contractor accountable for performance and costs.

Best practice needs to be adopted in this important government function to ensure that taxpayers’ money is spent in the most cost effective way. The first step to take is ensure that major public contracts are subjected to much more rigorous and structured scrutiny by the Public Accounts Committee.

It is equally important that better qualified staff with undoubted competence in economics, statistics and finance are engaged in the public sector at senior positions with their recommendations and input being treated as a solid base for policy decisions.

Much more openness must be encouraged to allow for the scrutiny of contracts. This would lead to the implementation of changes where a contract is found to be against the interest of the public or too much money is paid for a particular procurement.

Accountability and transparency will always be the quality hallmarks of a public procurement system.