Counting the cost of accountability

ANALYSIS:First-class travel at Fás may be a symptom of a more general malaise, writes Colm Keena

THE FÁS witnesses who appeared before the Dáil Public Accounts Committee (PAC) yesterday for yet another round of questioning about spending controls within the organisation had a tough time of it.

Everyone is in agreement that there was unacceptable expenditure of public funds by the organisation and one of the issues that arises is the question of responsibility.

Last month, the then director general Rody Molloy was very much the leader of the Fás team that appeared before the committee, sitting centre stage and robustly fielding balls lobbed towards the Fás side of the room.

Yesterday Molloy was at the edge of the pitch while the forceful assistant director general - and incoming president of the GAA - Christy Cooney headed up the Fás defence. When Cooney was asked to introduce the Fás witnesses, he didn't include Molloy, who resigned last week after his disastrous radio interview with Pat Kenny.

Also there was Peter McLoone, the senior trade unionist who has been chairman of the Fás board since January 2006. "Let me be upfront about why I am here today," he said. "In the past there has been poor management of some Fás resources, and in some instances there has been unacceptable waste."

The current board, he said, would take responsibility for the period since 2006, including its handling of shortcomings from before that period that had since come to light.

Molloy resigned after the radio interview in which he said he was "entitled" to travel first class on Fás business. Yesterday he said that with hindsight he accepted it was not appropriate to do so.

Jim O'Keeffe of Fine Gael asked Cooney for his view on Molloy and others travelling first class. Cooney responded: "What happened was unacceptable."

When McLoone was asked, he also said it was not appropriate, particularly given that the people Fás was serving were often underprivileged. He said the matter of foreign travel had never come before the board.

While the matter may not have come before the board, the board cannot say some members did not know about it. McLoone travelled first class to Orlando in January 2007 on a ticket that cost €7,308. He was accompanied by Molloy, assistant director general Gerry Pyke (now retired), and Owen Willis, the TEEU general secretary and member of the Fás board. All travelled first class.

That point wasn't put to McLoone at yesterday's hearing and afterwards he said it was his only such trip. However, the problem is the worrying impression all of this creates of a disregard for the need to treat with due regard the public funds with which Fás is entrusted. The training authority's annual budget is approximately €1 billion.

And it's not just foreign travel. The PAC inquiry has its genesis in an internal Fás inquiry into its corporate affairs division and the director of that division, Greg Craig, who appears to have handled his division's budget with disregard for the authority's procurement rules.

Craig reported to Pyke, who reported to Molloy. The careless treatment of public funds by Craig appears to have gone on for a period of at least five years.

Molloy yesterday told Róisín Shortall that he first became concerned about the possibility that Craig was breaching procurement rules during the course of the audit inquiry. But the Labour TD was not convinced.

She read out a section of a speaking note from October 2006, drafted by Molloy in advance of a board meeting, in which he said he had appointed Pyke over Craig some years earlier and that he had emphasised and re-emphasised the need for public service norms.

Molloy said Craig was an innovative person who had the ability to get things done, but he, Molloy, had no idea at the time that he was breaching procedures.

Shortall said that perhaps if Molloy hadn't made 16 foreign trips over a 3½-year period, or Pyke 13 foreign trips over a four-year period, they might have been able to keep a closer eye on Craig.

Molloy said he was accompanying Ministers on a significant number of the trips, and he believed this was appropriate. The Ministers are unlikely to be called.