Gilmore: Board should resign

LABOUR leader Eamon Gilmore has called for the resignation of the entire board of Fás and criticised the trade union members who sit on the board.

Mr Gilmore said he was “disappointed” that the board didn’t put an end to the lavish expenses regime at the state training agency.

“I think that they have a case to answer, and I think in circumstances where the director general of Fás has now resigned, where another senior executive has been suspended [and] where there has been excessive junketeering going on, I think that the position of that board is untenable,” Mr Gilmore said.

Labour is the political party most closely allied to the trade unions, and for that reason, it is unusual for a Labour leader to criticise union personnel.

But Mr Gilmore did not spare the five union figures on the board, which include the Fás chairman, Peter McLoone, who is general secretary of the IMPACT union.

“I think that the board should go and I think that a new board should be put in place in Fás.

“I also think, and I said this in the Dáil, that the minister who supervised Fás over this period of time [will] have a case to answer because the whole regime of pay and expenses which apply in Fás had to have the approval of ministers,” he said.

Mr Gilmore was speaking on TV3’s The Political Party programme last night, a few hours after a three-day Labour Party conference opened in Kilkenny.

In his opening address to the conference, Mr Gilmore said the problems at Fás seemed to have developed because of a “cosy circle” between some senior executives and the ministers who provided their funding.

“The ministers in charge ensured that Fás got plenty of money. Fás, in return, lavished gifts and expensive foreign travel to pleasant foreign locations on their political paymasters,” Mr Gilmore said.

“We now know that no less than five ministers sampled the delights of Florida as guests of Fás, with the taxpayer footing the bill.”

The Labour conference continues today.