A losing bidder for a contract to provide surveys for the retrofitting of hundreds of thousands of properties countrywide has lost a challenge to the awarding of the €75 million contract.

The contract, which is awarded by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI), is set to last up to five years and the services include building energy ratings (Ber), surveys and inspections for domestic and non-domestic properties.

The contract was held by Kerrigan Sheanon Newman Unlimited Company (KSN), which has been supplying the services to the SEAI since 2012.

A new public procurement process was held in which the SEAI awarded the contract to the Abtran firm in June 2024.

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KSN then brought High Court proceedings against the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, with Abtran as notice party, challenging the award.

In a judgment delivered last month and published this week, Judge Rory Mulcahy refused Kerrigan Sheanon Newman’s application for judicial review of the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland’s decision to award the contract to Abtran.

In its proceedings, KSN claimed the Abtran tender was too low, noting that it was 30 per cent lower than the price being paid to Kerrigan Sheanon Newman for the service.

The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland disputed KSN’s claims and opposed the challenge to the awarding of the contract.

The judge said Kerrigan Sheanon Newman failed to establish any manifest error by the SEAI in its determination that Abtran’s bid was genuine and was not abnormally low.

Kerrigan Sheanon Newman also failed to establish that the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland’s decision concluding that Abtran’s tender was not abnormally low was implausible or that it made a clear error in so concluding, he said.

The SEAI was also entitled to conclude that Abtran had adequately explained its costs and proposed resources, he said.

The evidence did not establish that there was a clear error by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland in accepting that Abtran could perform the contract with the resources proposed, he said.

None of several other grounds pleaded by KSN provided any basis for a remedy, he said.