Satisfaction, Italian style

The good news first: Malta should now get the Lm17,701,000 grant, included in the 2004 Estimates, due under the fifth (and final) Italian protocol. Not that there should ever have been any doubts: The grant was not what is formally known as "tied aid" - dependent on the proceeds being spent on purchases from suppliers within the donor's country. I confess, though, that I did have doubts. They were sown months ago by informal exchanges in Rome with political and diplomatic individuals who chewed their fine food with habitual appreciation but showed no inclination to mince their words.

They indicated that fresh funds had only been promised to Malta because Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami had caught his Italian counterpart alone and Silvio Berlusconi proceeded to commit himself before urbane advisers could remind him that Italy need not give anymore. For one thing, they felt, Malta should go for pre EU-accession funds. For another, their country had got little in return for its generosity over the decades since former premier Dom Mintoff had prised open the Roman purse.

Such elements could not undo what their prime minister had committed himself to do. They did murmur darkly, though, that Dante's own inferno would seem mild relative to the ensuing eruption should Italian interests not win the contract to supply medical equipment to the Mater Dei Hospital. When, against my admittedly sketchy background, the decree on the Fifth Protocol cleared whatever political hurdles may have lain across its way in the Italian legislature I remained sceptical that the approved grant funds would really arrive were the contract to go elsewhere, as seemed quite possible for a time. I worried unduly. As the Old Year headed for its end with a whimper, a government statement banged out on Monday that, after all, the contract was allocated to the Italian bidder.

For all one knows, that may indeed have been the most worthy offer. Various medical practitioners who will be utilising the equipment do not seem to think so. Their ease of mind and how it will translate into the welfare of the patients who shall someday require the services to be provided at Mater Dei counts far more than the interests of the other bidders. No doubt, those will be demanding to know how the initial technical difficulties encountered in evaluating the Italian bidder's offer, and recalled in the report in The Times (December 30), have been overcome. Commercial interests have their particular ring within which to fight.

The Italian interests, whatever trials and tribulations they might feel they had to go through, have won the day. The deal has turned full circle and is finally done. What has been undone - and that is the bad news - is any reasonable presumption that Malta has a public contracts system that works well under all circumstances. The Mater Dei equipment contract has passed through a great-grandma of an unholy mess. The bullet-point reasoning applied in the government statement on Monday, with the House of Representatives on holiday and people nudging themselves into a bit of a New Year mood, is final. It does not really clear the air.

As Malta counts down the 120 days to go before acceding to the EU it will have to be made much clearer how public contracts will be awarded under the obligations to be assumed through membership. That few future contracts may be as big as that for the Mater Dei original equipment does not make the essential principles to be followed any smaller. The Italians may be satisfied this time round. Euro-satisfaction will have to be of sterner stuff and wider stretch next time.