Public procurement notice: Voluntary Ex Ante Transparency Notice
Published: 2025-10-09
Buyer: Dublin City Council
Country: IE
Region: IE061
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Negotiated without a prior call for competition
CPV classification: 72212600: Database software programming services | 72320000 | 72415000: Website hosting services
Estimated value: 100000 EUR
Award criteria: cost

Technical requirements: Dublin City Council gives notice to invoke Article 32.2(b) (ii) and (iii) for a derogation from public procurement whereby the works, supplies or services can be provided only by a particular economic operator as (ii) competition is absent for technical reasons and (iii) the protection of exclusive rights, including intellectual property rights. Dublin City Council intends to award a contract to Viatel Ireland Limited for a period of 2 years. The maximum value of this contract is €100,000 ex VAT.

This notice details the intention of Dublin City Council (DCC) to award a contract  to Viatel Ireland Ltd for critical system upgrades and ongoing support for the Roadworks Control Online Entry system (RCOE), a custom legacy application. The award will be made without a prior call for competition, in accordance with Article 32.2(b)(ii) and (iii) of Directive 2014/24/EU, due to the absence of competition for technical reasons.

The RCOE system is a critical business application used for issuing licenses and retrieving data for court purposes and the continued functionality is essential to DCC's business operations. Any system failure or data loss would result in extremely high financial and reputational risks for Dublin City Council. The system is currently hosted on an older operating system which is currently in the process of an upgrade.

While an ongoing national program to migrate all utility companies to a new system, Map Road Licensing (MRL) exists, this migration has been subject to significant and unforeseen delays, leaving the mission-critical  RCOE system operational for the immediate future.
The RCOE system's integrity is compromised by several factors that collectively create a unique and complex technical challenge. The application's critical role in issuing licenses and supporting court cases makes a comprehensive upgrade mandatory and any disruption could have severe legal and operational consequences. In summary, it is not technically feasible, practical or secure to migrate the service to a new supplier until urgent remedial work and upgrades are completed and any delay is to  jeopardise the continuity of a critical service
The services for the necessary upgrade and support can only be supplied by a single economic operator, for the following technical reasons:

- The current support partners have exclusive knowledge of the RCOE system's complex and undocumented environment.
- The current hosting partner is the only supplier with proven expertise, having delivered all recent modifications and migrations of the application. Replacing them now would disrupt established collaboration with the application support teams, increase complexity, and create accountability risks when issues arise.
- An urgent upgrade and migration project is underway, with the system having been successfully moved to the UAT environment. The current support partners are the only parties who have been involved from the start of this complex and ongoing process. Discontinuing this work to initiate a new tender would introduce unacceptable delays and significantly increase the risk of system failure and data loss.

Due to the criticality and unstable nature of the current environment, it is not feasible to wait for a competitive procurement process. The urgent remedial work and upgrades, already in progress, must be completed by the only suppliers with the necessary technical expertise and historical knowledge of the system.

In order to safeguard the integrity of a critical public service and to mitigate immediate and significant operational, security, and financial risks, this contract award will be for a fixed term to stabilise the environment. DCC have initiated a procurement plan to procure future hosting and support services. Upon successful completion of the RCOE system, DCC will initiate a new, open tender process for future hosting and support services.

Article 32 of Directive 2014/24/EU Section 2. Provides for the award of contract without prior publication of a call for competition  (b) where the works, supplies or services can be supplied only by a particular economic operator for any of the following reasons:

(ii)	competition is absent for technical reasons;
(iii)   the protection of exclusive rights, including intellectual property rights;