A NEW Fás board will be appointed “immediately” once legislation to be presented to Government next week is passed into law, the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Mary Coughlan, said yesterday. Ms Coughlan said her department had just signed off on the new legislation.

Speaking at a vocational schools’ managers conference in Ennis, Co Clare, yesterday, the recently appointed director general of Fás, Paul O’Toole, said staff at Fás were “bruised” and “disappointed” by continuing revelations about excessive spending at the agency.

The chairman of the board, trade unionist Peter McLoone, and Mr O’Toole are due to appear before the Dáil Committee on Public Accounts on Thursday next. They will be asked about a recent report by the Comptroller Auditor General, John Buckley, concerning advertising expenditure by the agency.

The committee chairman, Bernard Allen TD, said it will also invite the secretary general of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Seán Gorman, to attend.

Mr Allen said the committee may in time call Greg Craig, head of the corporate affairs division in Fás, the division that manages most of its advertising budget.

The former director general, Rody Molloy, resigned in November last year as a result of controversy over spending controls at Fás.

During committee hearings at the time there was much discussion of Mr Craig’s stewardship of the corporate affairs division, but he was not called before the committee as he had been on sick leave and was suspended upon his return. He is now back at work with the agency.

Mr Buckley is due to publish a second report on Fás shortly that will review discreet expenditure issues concerning the agency, including the issue of flights by members of staff to the US.

It will also look at a system whereby Fás representatives in the US operated floats from which the expenses of some Fás staff members were paid while they were in the US.