THE FIRST major step in the break-up of Fás as it was formerly organised is to take place on the first of next month, staff at the training authority have been told.
The new director general of the authority, Paul O’Toole has informed them that responsibility for policy and budgets in the employment and community services areas are to be transferred to Éamon Ó Cuív’s Department of Social Protection on October 1st.
The move means that approximately 40 per cent of Fás staff will move to Mr Ó Cuív’s department while the remainder will “in effect move to a revised form of skills organisation”.
Approximately half of the Fás budget will move from the Department of Education and Skills to Mr Ó Cuív’s department. Responsibility for Fás was moved from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment to the Department of Education and Skills on May 1st last. The Tánaiste, Mary Coughlan made a similar move in March of this year in the Cabinet reshuffle.
The change next month means the public offices of Fás and the community enterprise aspect of its operations begin the process of transferral to Mr Ó Cuív’s department.
“Operational responsibility for these functions will not be transferred until further legislation is enacted,” Mr O’Toole said in a note to staff. “Pending this, we will agree a service level agreement with to set out how the interim arrangements will work in practice.”
He said the new piece of legislation is expected by the end of the year. Staff members who moved to the Department of Social Protection will be re-designated as civil servants. “It is not expected that staff will transfer until the second quarter of 2011,” he said in the staff note. According to one source in the training authority, the remaining element of Fás, which will be responsible for training and apprenticeship activities, may have to tender for its budget each year in competition with such organisations as the institutes of technology and the VECs.
The leader of Siptu, Jack O’Connor, has said he does not agree with the view of the Labour Party’s Ruairí Quinn, that Fás should be shut down and its training budget transferred to educational institutions such as the institutes of technology.
He said he understood Mr Quinn’s frustration but said the State training authority could be reformed. There was a need for an organisation such as Fás that oversaw skills and training policy.
“A wide variety of skills were needed for a sustainable economy,” he said on RTÉ radio’s This Week programme. “We can’t build an economy exclusively on people who have third-level education.”
He said it was important “not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
Meanwhile, an attempt by Fás to introduce new procurement procedure controls has run into difficulties.
Managers at the authority were asked by Mr O’Toole to sign new procurement compliance certificates in which they would confirm they had exercised due diligence over procurement transactions in their areas of responsibility.
Siptu branch organiser Brendan O’Brien has written to the affected staff saying there were serious concerns about the implications of signing the documents.
The union has issued a branch directive to the effect that the new documents would not be signed, and has advised senior Fás management of this.
Last week, it emerged that difficulties identified during a European audit of Fás expenditures has led to a cessation of European Social Fund payments pending the resolution of the audit shortcomings.
