TRAINING:OFFICIALS IN three Government departments have been asked to work out arrangements for sharing the responsibility for State training agency Fás, a Government spokesman said last night.
After the Cabinet reshuffle, responsibility for Fás was spread between the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Innovation; the Department of Education and Skills; and the Department of Social Protection.
Minister for Enterprise Batt O’Keeffe insisted yesterday that Fás was still under the remit of his department. “I’m going to look at Fás – it’s still under my remit. I’m going to look at what the reconfiguration of Fás is going to be; what I’ll look at in terms of training, training that’s meaningful, training that will relate to the jobs of the future, and will prepare people, upskill people and retrain people.”
Mr O’Keeffe said Ireland had to be prepared for the demand for our exports that would come when there was an economic improvement.
In the Dáil, Mr Cowen said he wanted to see Fás and the three Ministers now involved in its oversight working out new arrangements to provide a better service for people who need it.
“We will get on with ensuring that the agency sits down with the Ministers concerned and that the practical arrangements for the interface between that wing of Fás dealing with social welfare and the other wing of Fás dealing with education will proceed,” he told Labour leader Eamon Gilmore.
“The changes and rearrangements I announced yesterday are intended to provide better services to the public... In the first instance, there must be better co-ordination among existing organisations and the departments,” Mr Cowen added.
Responding to Mr Gilmore’s claim that changing the names of departments would cost millions of euro, the Taoiseach said this was not the first occasion on which name changes had occurred and he expected they would be dealt with in the normal way.
The Irish Small and Medium Enterprise Association (Isme) expressed concern at the decision to divide the responsibility for Fás between three separate departments, saying that at a time when job creation, upskilling and training were paramount, the decision did not make sense and would only fragment and dilute the current services available.