Tourism Ireland Wastes Over 1 Million Euro on Covid-19 Research...

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Key points:

Etenders is a bottomless pit for Irish Government spending waste
In May 2020, Tourism Ireland created and awarded a frivolous tender to the value of over 1 million euro, for Market Research on how Covid-19 has impacted Tourism to Ireland
We show you the details, and the bigger picture

Recently we told you how Dublin City University paid over 500 euro each for hand sanitiser stations, after over one hundred of them were installed all over their Glasnevin campus. This was all paid for with borrowed public money.

Hundreds of contracts like these have been handed out since the beginning of Irish Government’s Covid-19 manufactured hysteria. Remember the 65 million-euro PPE theatre that RTE produced with Aer Lingus and China? That was the signal for the widespread looting of the public purse to begin.

In May 2020, Tourism Ireland (another bloated government quango for personal friends of FFG) listed a tender document for assistance with ‘Covid-19 Travel Research’ (Tender number CVD 20-008).

The tender was ultimately awarded to RedC Polling, for a total of 1,056,200.00 euro. Tourism Ireland is currently run by Green Party TD, Catherine Martin.

We allege no wrongdoing by RedC Polling – business is business. Tourism Ireland bizarrely listed the tender estimated cost at 1 million before receiving any bids in the first place, so RedC Polling only charged what Tourism Ireland asked them to charge.

All of those early election polls that were favourable for the Irish Government parties Fianna Fail and Fine Gael (that RedC got hugely wrong) indicate that RedC definitely need some other revenue sources – they’re not very good at poll predictions.

Keep an eye on the massive pre-election polling scandal in the US Presidential election for interesting parallels to Irish pre-election polling. More on that here.

If you’re wondering whether this is how most tenders happen in Ireland then the answer is yes, it is. Most Irish Government agencies detail the money they intend to spend with favoured business before bids are received. You can probably work out why.

All related tender documents referenced in this piece are available for download on the green button at the the bottom of the article. If you create an account on etenders, you can do plenty of digging for yourself (hint: etenders is where all the bodies are buried).

The Irish Government’s approach to business is like one of us walking into a used-car dealership with a giant cheque advertising how much we have to spend.

Why don’t Irish Government agencies let companies bid first, to increase competitiveness and value for money? The way that the corrupt Irish Government directs their quangos to do business is very strange, for an organisation with a cast-iron credit rating. One thing is clear: Irish Government agencies have zero respect for public monies.

The Tourism Ireland Tender Document

As you can see from the image below, Tourism Ireland is seeking a:

‘service provider capable of providing quantitative and qualitative research about COVID-19’s impact on travel to the island of Ireland’.
Tender doc quote from Tourism Ireland

On the face of it, the need for this tender is obviously questionable. Intuitively many of us will know that keeping an eye on international announcements relating to travel restrictions is an easy way to stay on top of where tourism advertising spend would be best utilised.

For proof of this, look back on the Children’s Hospital costings scam; The Dail/Parliament giant-printer scam; and the Covid Media Advertising scam which we explained here, which is designed to persuade us to fear a virus that has less real impact than any other illness in the country.

May 2020 initial Request for tenders (RFT) by Tourism Ireland

As far as we can see, it is a total waste of public money given the public availability of the information Tourism Ireland are seeking.

Below is Tourism Ireland’s one-page justification-spiel to spend 1 million euro of your money – a few paragraphs of stating the obvious in order to support the hiring of an agency for something that they themselves can easily ascertain, by using phone calls and the internet. Namely – when and where to start spending money on Tourism Advertising once Covid-19 starts to become less of an issue.

What you see above is Tourism Ireland stating the obvious: the tourism industry in Ireland was broken in July (thanks to Covid fear-mongering, and unscientific lockdowns enacted across Europe). So why did Tourism Ireland need a research partner? And what services exactly did they require?

The Quantative research aspect (mentioned in the last paragraph above) involving statistical regression analysis could have been performed by the average research scientist for a small fee.

That said, we cannot imagine what on earth Tourism Ireland would require statistical regression analysis for, within the specified tender brief.

Tourism Ireland are basically wondering what countries to advertise in when Covid-19 hysteria recedes. Quantitative statistical research is not needed for this.

Tourism Ireland stating the obvious

On page 15 of the tender document, Tourism Ireland tell us what they need to do (i.e., they tell us what they are supposed to be doing anyway as agents for Irish Tourism).

Covid-19-Research-program-tourism-ireland-what-needs-to-be-done — Tourism Ireland telling us what their job is

Could we have helped Tourism Ireland out before they agreed to spend over 1 million euro? Most of us could have.

Here are the answers to the above queries:

Maybe when travel lockdowns are lifted in our target tourism markets, we should start advertising again (set up a Google alert for each country and the word ‘lockdown’ and ‘travel’)
Maybe WHERE travel is opened up from, in relation to Ireland’s own list of countries not requiring quarantines, is a good place to advertise for Tourism in Ireland. For updates regarding Ireland’s green list travel they should call the department of Tourism ….oh wait, TOURISM, that’s their department.
Marketing would be best targeted at the same people in those countries WHO were already coming to Ireland in large numbers before Covid-19 hit. Tourism Ireland, you have that data right?

That ought to be about 500,000 euro for freepress.ie judging by the tender award – we await the Tourism-Ireland cheque in the post at Freepress towers.

Let’s see what else can we help them with!

Interestingly, Tourism Ireland ADMIT that they have their own research program already outlined to accomplish some of this, using their existing hard-pressed staff (that are actually doing nothing right now):

So Tourism Ireland were actually planning on doing *SOME* work

And here is exactly what they want to pay 1,056,200 euro to RedCpolls for:

Services Required - Covid 19 Research program tender for tourism ireland cvd20-008 — Phone calls, zoom calls, and a few workshops for 1 million euro

The only items Tourism Ireland can’t do themselves with Mailchimp polls or Qualtrics surveys, Zoom & Microsoft Teams, and phone calls, are the physical focus groups. But why do they need focus groups anyway? Tourism Ireland can simply watch the news online for each country, and advertise Ireland as a Tourist destination when travel is opened up.

That’s got to be another 250k on the way in the post for us. This is great work if you can get it folks!

Tip of the Iceberg – there is Irish Government Waste on a Grand Scale

This is yet another example of total waste by Irish Government departments, spending money our children will be paying back for generations. They’ll be the one’s stuck paying everything back to the ECB, having their country sold out from under them when state assets are sold to pay the interest bills.

While much of the current waste-spending program is in the name of Covid-19, there are literally thousands of examples on etenders of massive overpayment for services, for everything from recruitment to street sign-washing: one company is getting 600k per year to clean street signs in Dublin City Centre – apparently the rain is no longer wet in Dublin.

Abuse is rife across this system handed to us from the EU. Backs are being scratched via connections across the network, and departments themselves want to spend as much money as they can to increase their own influence, budgets, power and prestige.

There are zero penalties for non-compliance on etenders, and there are hundreds of ongoing Government department tenders that are not even published on the system. These are renewed every year without any competition.

We’ll leave you with this absolute doozy. Check out this requirement for companies to be eligible to win the tender:

turnover requirement - Covid 19 Research program tender for tourism ireland cvd20-008 — No room for helping small business from this Irish Government, 2 million turnover minimum to qualify

Your company has to have a turnover of over 2 million in a year to even qualify to apply. That’s to do market research and run some focus groups and zoom chats.

That’s banana-republic Ireland for you: small businesses be damned. Big business can also stay open during Covid-19 unscientific lockdowns, yet small businesses are made to close. This is called Collectivisation. See the pattern here? It’s also called Corporate Socialism, as explained here. One rule for them, another for the rest of us.

This really is the tip of the iceberg in the etenders cesspool. Stay tuned folks, and start digging for yourselves and calling your political representatives.

The Public Accounts Committee is toothless and needs real legislative support. All Government department spending needs to be given full oversight by a dedicated independent body within the Irish Government – they have farmed out everything to the various department and there is zero oversight of how our tax money is being spent. Fraud is rampant.

Please share our work in your network, Facebook and Twitter are now censoring us and free speech in general like never before.

Tourism Ireland Tender Document Downloads for this Tender:

Click for Tourism Ireland Tender Document

Downloads for this Tender: https://gofile.io/d/HDAGR3 >>>

Setup your own account on Etenders and start digging: https://www.etenders.gov.ie/

Covid Research Tender details for Tourism Ireland:
Refs: 169202, CVD20-008
COVID-19 Research Programm, 10/07/2020, 22/05/2020 12:00Accelerated Open Procedure (OJEU) Justified on the Grounds of UrgencyTourism Ireland CLG