ICT procurement frameworks from the NCTE

Thanks to Batt O’Keefe’s decision to award €2.2 million to some primary schools for ICT equipment, the NCTE have decided to introduce some frameworks in order to spend all that money.  There are guidelines on projectors prices, laptop prices, printer prices and visualiser prices…but no mention of Interactive Whiteboards at all.  So, the question on my lips is, naturally, why?
I wish I had the answer to this because even after getting an explanation, I’m still confused.  Apparantly, in their infinite wisdom, the NCTE decided no to bother looking at current prices of IWBs and assumed they still cost €5,000 upwards, thus eating into the whole €5,000 per classroom budget.  It’s now fairly difficult to find an IWB with such a high price and it is very easy to acquire one for half that.
I think it would be a good idea for the NCTE to add IWBs that cost between €2,000 and €3,000 to their list of “procurements.”  Naturally, I doubt they will.  So far, they seem to work a couple of years behind everyone else.  Examples include an email system that was outdated by gmail when it was released and static web hosting when nowadays most decent web sites need a database to run.
In conclusion, it doesn’t surprise me that the NCTE wouldn’t recommend the latest technologies that teachers are actually using.  However, I must be positive so I will now add the word “procurements” to my vocabulary and use it as often as possible.