Bord Bia reports €1.2m in non-compliant spending for 2025

Bord Bia breached State spending rules for the second consecutive year, according to its 2025 annual report, which recorded €1.2 million of expenditure incurred without a competitive tendering procedure.

A second year of non-compliant expenditure

Bord Bia’s 2025 annual report disclosed that €1.2 million of spending was incurred without a competitive tendering procedure in accordance with procurement guidelines. The agency, which markets Irish food and drink industries globally, said the amount was identified through a compliance review. The Comptroller and Auditor General’s report included in the annual report described the expenditure as showing “a material level of noncompliance with procurement rules”. The disclosure follows the agency’s 2024 report, which identified more than €2.6 million spent on services that should have been procured through a competitive tendering procedure. Bord Bia chair Larry Murrin said the 2025 figure was an improvement, but the agency has not provided a breakdown of the latest amount.

What the agency says went wrong

Bord Bia said all of the expenditure was authorised and incurred for legitimate business purposes. It attributed the non-compliant cases to circumstances including contracts expiring before replacement procurement arrangements were completed, purchases by separate teams cumulatively exceeding the relevant tender threshold, and required documentation not being completed when expenditure was incurred. These explanations illustrate why procurement compliance depends on controls across the life of a contract, rather than only on approval of individual invoices. Separate purchases can become subject to a tender requirement when their combined value passes a threshold, while an expired contract can leave an organisation without a compliant route for continuing the service. The agency said it had addressed each case through contract updates and completion of the required documentation.

Controls are being strengthened

Murrin’s statement said Bord Bia had strengthened controls during 2025 and would continue strengthening spending controls to avoid repeated instances of non-compliant expenditure. The measures included targeted follow-up training and procurement seminars for staff managing budgets and raising purchase orders, both domestically and internationally. Bord Bia also said it had strengthened supplier-spend monitoring, contract management and staff guidance. Those measures are intended to help identify aggregate purchasing across teams, track contract expiry dates and ensure that the records supporting a procurement are completed at the time of spending. The annual report does not say how the €1.2 million was distributed across services, so it is not possible from the disclosure to identify which categories accounted for the 2025 total.

The wider spending picture

The annual report records a rise in Bord Bia’s consultancy costs from €850,000 to €1.9 million in 2025. Costs classified as business improvement increased from €214,000 to €673,000, while new system development costs rose from €100,000 to €733,000. The report also said staff headcount reached 183 and total remuneration increased from €20.6 million to €21.5 million. In 2024, the breakdown of non-compliant spending included €1.69 million for market services under one contract, €680,000 for other marketing services, €700,000 for legal services, €110,000 for ICT services and €90,000 for HR services. The 2025 report gives no equivalent category breakdown.

Reported from irishtimes.com, 2026-09-08. The Tender Wire is published by Otnox.