THE CHAIRMAN of Fás, the national training authority, has responded to media reports on its board’s decision to hold a two-day meeting at the Mount Juliet Conrad Hotel in Co Kilkenny.
Peter McLoone said the meeting would have been organised a year in advance and that it was difficult to get the board members, most of whom are not employed by the authority, to give up two days of their time in order to attend.
He said the board meets once a month at the Fás headquarters in Dublin but also holds a special meeting, over two days each year, so as to conduct an extensive review of the authority’s activities and the challenges in the year ahead.
Mr McLoone told Newstalk 106 FM that the board of Fás “is up there with the best. We don’t make any misuse of taxpayers’ money. In fact it’s one of the things that concentrates our deliberations every single month, which is to get full value for the allocation that we get from the exchequer. That’s our main purpose.”
Expenditure controls at Fás have been the subject of a number of media reports in recent times, based on internal audit reports that have been released to the media under the Freedom of Information Act.
Rody Molloy, the director general of Fás, is to appear before the Public Accounts Committee on Thursday to discuss a number of matters raised in a recent special report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, John Buckley.
Last week the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Mary Coughlan, asked Mr Buckley to conduct a special inquiry into expenditure controls at Fás.