Minister for the Environment John Gormley has said the board of Fás should resign following a damning report by the Comptroller and Auditor General on expenditure controls at the agency.
The report found there was little or no response from the executive board to large and repeated overspending on advertising during the period 2002-2008.
The Green Party leader said this morning said board members should consider their positions.
"I believe there has to be real accountability," he told RTÉ's Morning Ireland. "The public are concerned about the level of wastage that has occurred. It's not acceptable … and in my view they should consider their positions."
Asked if this meant they should resign, he said: “That’s correct.”
Yesterday, the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Mary Coughlan said she would accept the resignations of Fás board members if they were offered. Ms Coughlan said her representative on the Fás board had told a board meeting yesterday that she intended introducing legislation during this sitting of the Oireachtas to change its structure.
Fine Gael’s Leo Varadkar and the Labour Party’s Joan Burton have also called for resignation of board members. Mr Varadkar called for forthcoming legislation to restructure the agency to include a provision to replace senior managers who allowed a culture of "greed and waste" to thrive.
Fás had a budget of more than €1 billion last year. Its former director general, Rody Molloy, resigned in November in the middle of a controversy over spending controls at the agency, and disclosures of first-class flights to Florida for staff.
Paul O’Toole, the former chief executive of Tourism Ireland, was appointed director general in April of this year. The Fás board is chaired by trade unionist Peter McLoone and includes civil servants and representatives of the social partners.
In a statement the Fás board said the report would be discussed at a meeting of the Dáil Public Accounts Committee on September 24th.
“The current report will be carefully considered by the board and executive of Fás. It is our intention to act upon the report’s findings as quickly as possible. In this regard significant work has already been carried out to address many of the issues of concern raised previously.”
The report examines advertising and promotion spending of €48 million, which represented a 38 per cent budget overrun. The report said expenditure of €420,000 on flights to the US by staff and others will feature in an upcoming report, as will expenditure on expenses incurred by staff while in the US. Some of this latter expenditure occurred by way of a system whereby four Fás representatives in the US were given large cash “floats” to pay for costs incurred by participants in the agency’s Science Challenge programme.
Siptu said yesterday senior head "must roll" at the agency over the revelations.