THE TÁNAISTE and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Mary Coughlan has said she would accept the resignation of Fás board members if they offered to resign.
Ms Coughlan was speaking to reporters in the wake of another damning report on expenditure controls at the national employment and training agency. Asked if she believed the board should reconsider its position, as suggested by Joan Burton of the Labour Party, Ms Coughlan said it was not up to her to dictate to the board. Asked if she would accept resignations if they were offered, she said: “Yes.”
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.
She was speaking in the wake of a report on advertising and promotional spending by the agency over the period 2002-2008. The report, compiled by the Comptroller Auditor General John Buckley, found there was little or no response from the executive board to large and repeated overspending on advertising during the period.
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.
Over the period 2003-2007 €1.15 million was advanced to the representatives, of which €210,000 was unspent by the end of December 2007. Expenditure by the representatives was vouched.
