INFORMATION ABOUT overspending and serious breaches of procedure was "deliberately" kept from the board of Fás, a director of the State employment and training authority has told The Irish Times.
Niall Saul, an employers’ representative on the Fás board, said inquiries by the board have established that items that have featured in the controversy were identified at executive level but not reported to the board. He said the items “absolutely should have been reported up” to the board, but were not.
Other Fás directors who spoke to The Irish Times, but did not wish to be identified, echoed Mr Saul's views. "There was a culture of non-disclosure and the board was not told the full facts," one director said. "We now have proof that what was going on was being hidden from us. At a minimum there was misinformation. There were cases where the board was misled."
It is understood the views of the directors are representative of the board overall. Chairman of Fás Peter McLoone and recently appointed director general Paul O’Toole are to appear before the Dáil Committee on Public Accounts today to answer queries arising from the latest report on Fás from Comptroller and Auditor General John Buckley.
Secretary general of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment Seán Gorman, a former director of Fás, is also to appear.
New legislation that would lead to the replacement of the current board is being prepared and Green Party leader John Gormley has said the board should resign. However, the directors are adamant they should not be “scapegoated” over matters never brought to their attention.
“The board dealt with the information that came before it and conducted investigations into what came before it without fear or favour,” said Mr Saul.
He was critical of the office of the Comptroller Auditor General (CAG). “Every year they were in there and they never found any of the material” eventually identified by an internal audit inquiry into the corporate affairs division in Fás. “If we are being asked to resign, then why is it only us? The CAG does an annual audit that takes 10 weeks, it charges €87,000, and it has never found anything new,” he said. “It missed everything and now, post event, it is rehashing everything we found.”
Mr Saul also said that when the board was appointed, it was charged with implementing the Government decision that the headquarters of Fás should be decentralised to Birr, Co Offaly. “We went through that, at a huge cost, and it has turned out to be a big waste. The cost was phenomenal, bigger than anything in the CAG’s reports, yet no-one is being held to account for that.” The directors said work was nearing completion on reports on expenditure and other issues at the corporate affairs division in Fás and they were anxious to see this work to completion before they resigned.
“The board is ready to step down but is doesn’t want to be made the scapegoat for what others have done.”