Solar under the microscope: what the public record shows as the CCPC investigates bid-rigging

CCPC authorised officers, working with garda district detective units and local gardai, carried out unannounced searches of businesses active in the solar panel industry on 25 September 2026, under warrants from the District Court. The Irish Examiner reports that homes as well as business premises were searched. The CCPC has not said which businesses were searched or where in the country they are, and it is explicit that 'searches do not imply that any breach of competition law has occurred.'

This brief names no business, person or tender in connection with the investigation, and it will not. In Irish cartel cases names usually enter the public record only when charges are brought, and that has taken years. Anyone who repeats a rumour about who was searched risks damaging a business that may have done nothing wrong.

Bid-rigging is an agreement between competitors about how they will respond to a tender instead of competing for it. The CCPC lists the usual forms: agreeing who will win, submitting cover bids that are priced to lose, taking turns to win, and agreeing not to bid. The public buyer pays more, and so does the taxpayer behind it.

It also costs every installer outside the arrangement. An honest firm that prices a job properly and loses to a pre-arranged result has spent days on a bid that could never win, and it takes the wrong lesson from the price it lost on. A market where tender prices mean what they say is the one where a good installer wins work on merit.

Ireland's first bid-rigging convictions came from commercial flooring. Two contractors shared tender information on sixteen tenders between 2011 and 2013; searches in April 2013 ended it, one company applied to the Cartel Immunity Programme, and the other company and its former director were convicted in 2017. The Court of Appeal later raised the director's fine from €7,500 to €45,000.

The school transport case took longer. The CCPC opened an investigation into school bus tenders in the south west in 2016, fourteen people were charged in June 2022, and a jury convicted five on 18 December 2025. The law now allows up to ten years in prison and fines of up to €50 million or 20% of turnover, and the Cartel Immunity Programme offers the first participant to come forward and cooperate fully the chance to avoid prosecution.

PlanningLeads reads public tender notices from TED and eTenders. Since June 2020 it has recorded 56 notices with solar, photovoltaic or PV in the title, published by 37 different public buyers, including local authorities, energy and transport bodies. 31 are contract award notices, and 19 of those were published in 2025. 20 calls for competition were published in 2025 and 2026. No single winner holds more than three of the awards.

The planning register shows the demand behind the tenders, and much more private work besides. In the twelve months to 25 September 2026, 2,100 planning applications named solar work. 119 describe solar farms, arrays or parks, and 44 give a capacity in megawatts. 969 are homes with solar written into the specification, and 82 mention a school. Dublin City leads with 292, ahead of Dun Laoghaire Rathdown 138, Cork County 137, Fingal 115, South Dublin 98 and Kildare 96. A further 381 building control commencement notices carried solar work in the same period.

Much solar work never reaches the planning register at all. Since S.I. 493/2022 took effect on 7 October 2022, rooftop panels on homes, and within limits on schools, farms, community buildings and business premises, have been exempted development. What is on the register leans toward the larger and the unusual: ground-mounted arrays, protected structures and panels over the exemption limits.

Public award notices say who won and, often, for how much. They do not publish the losing bids, and losing bids are where bid-rigging lives. That is why the CCPC wants the power to screen procurement data held by the contracting authorities themselves, and why the proposed Consumer Protection, Competition and Enforcement Bill 2026 matters. Screening looks for patterns across many tenders; no dataset open to the public can say that any one tender was rigged, and nothing in this brief suggests that one was.

The best defence for an honest installer is to see the work early and price it well. The planning register names solar work months before a public tender is published or a private client calls for quotes, and a commencement notice marks the week a project goes on site. PlanningLeads tags solar work on every application and notice across all 31 councils, sends alerts as new matches are lodged, carries public tender notices from TED and eTenders with a bid-deadline calendar, and shows how long each council takes to decide so a bid can be timed. Installers working the grant-funded end of the market can start at SEAI grants.

The basics are simple: price every tender independently, never share a price or an intention to bid with a competitor, and decline to bid rather than put in a cover price when asked. The CCPC publishes a bid-rigging guide for businesses and public buyers, and anyone with information about coordinated tendering in the solar sector can contact the CCPC, anonymously if they prefer. This is general information about the law, not legal advice.

For retrofit and solar installers, PlanningLeads for retrofit installers sets up the feeds in one place, and county pages such as solar work in Cork show the live pipeline.