The public procurement market in the Republic and Northern Ireland involves annual expenditure of some £5 billion, a conference was told yesterday. Public sector purchasers were urged by Mr Pat Maher, a director of Enterprise Ireland, to "work with Irish suppliers in the context of fair and open tendering to identify opportunities for doing more business together".

Mr Maher was the keynote speaker at the 1998 annual conference of the Forum on Public Procurement in Ireland which took place in Tullamore yesterday.