THE EUROPEAN Commission is taking the Government to court over its award of a multimillion euro contract for interpretation and translation services that it claims broke EU law.
The three-year contract was awarded by the Department of Justice to US firm Lionbridge Language Services in 2006 for the provision of interpretation and translation services to the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner, the Refugee Appeals Tribunal, and the Reception and Integration Agency. The company has been paid more than €1.9 million under the contract so far.
The commission said yesterday it had decided to refer Ireland to Europe’s highest court, the European Court of Justice (ECJ), over the award procedure because the rules of competition were changed during the tender process.
“The commission considers that by attributing weightings to the award criteria following the closing date for the submission of bids, and by modifying them subsequent to an initial review of the submitted bids, the contracting authority changed the emphasis among the award criteria that were originally advertised and gave them a relative importance that was materially different from what a tenderer could understand from the contract documents,” the commission said in a statement.
The ECJ is expected to hear the case either this year or early next year. A Department of Justice spokeswoman said the department was considering the decision and would prepare its response in due course.