The High Court has refused Word Perfect Translation Services Limited’s request for discovery of the successful bidder’s tender and documents in two disputed categories in its challenge to a public procurement award.
Mr Justice Max Barrett delivered the judgment on 16 March 2018. The discovery application arose in proceedings concerning a tender competition for translation services. Word Perfect had secured a place on a multi-supplier framework in 2015. In a later competition for Lot 4 services, it submitted a tender by a revised deadline of 17 January 2017. The Office of Government Procurement notified it on 18 April 2017 that its bid had been unsuccessful and that translation.ie was the preferred bidder.
Word Perfect alleges that the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform breached procurement rules and EU law. Those claims were not decided in this judgment, which dealt with discovery. The parties had agreed most of the requested categories, subject to a dispute about disclosure of translation.ie’s tender. Two other categories remained contested: documents about the opening, access, downloading and review of tenders, and documents concerning the evaluation panel chairperson’s role.
The court applied the ordinary discovery principles of relevance, necessity and proportionality. It said that the broad request for records about opening and accessing tenders lacked focus and could reach material beyond what was relevant and necessary. For the pleaded complaints examined, the court considered that relevant documents would be covered by the agreed categories. It also found no factual dispute requiring discovery over the chairperson’s lack of involvement in the evaluation or officials’ access to Word Perfect’s tender, as those matters were not disputed by the Minister.
The court separately refused discovery of translation.ie’s tender. It concluded that the document was not relevant to the pleaded issues. It also considered evidence that the competition would need to be rerun in the short term and that disclosure could harm the successful bidder’s commercial position. After reviewing the tender at the parties’ request, the judge said redactions for commercial confidentiality would leave nothing useful to Word Perfect.
The court’s order was limited to the discovery application: it declined to order production of translation.ie’s tender and the documents sought under categories 3 and 4. The judgment did not determine the underlying challenge to the award.