Fás ‘apathy and extravagance’ severely criticised in report

STATE training agency Fás breached financial procedures, wrongly funded first-class flights for senior executives and spent tens of millions of euro in questionable ways, according to a damning new report.

The Dáil Public Accounts Committee called in its report for the board of Fás to be “restructured” and the disciplinary code in the organisation to be reviewed.

It also made recommendations to tighten controls.

The chairman of the committee, Fine Gael TD Bernard Allen, said there had been a “serious lack of oversight” at the agency which led to wastage and excess.

“A culture of apathy and extravagance seems to have pervaded the organisation, with a distinct lack of any proper systems of checks and balances,” he added.

At least e1.8 million of taxpayers’ money was definitely wasted between 2000 and 2005, the committee found. This included e1.2m spent on a website called Jobs Ireland which duplicated the Fás website and had to be shut down.

The company hired to develop the site had been set up only 10 days before the contract was awarded, raising “serious concerns as to the adequate capability” of the firm to do the work.

The wastage bill also included e160,000 lost because Fás appears to have been overcharged. This is now the subject of a Garda investigation.

Another e9,000 was lost on a car purchased for a raffle but which disappeared.

In addition to the e1.8m definitely wasted, the committee found that Fás had spent e35m in advertising from 2003 to 2007 and much of it was done “in an unorthodox fashion from a procurement perspective”.

The committee said the manner in which the corporate affairs division of Fás had handled procurement “exposed the organisation to serious risk” and resulted in a loss of taxpayers’ money.

The culture within the division was such that controls “were simply bypassed” and value for taxpayers’ money was not achieved.

In addition, the level of oversight of the division by senior management in Fás was “inadequate”. The Fás board did not engage sufficiently with the issues, with the result it “failed to discharge its responsibilities”.

In addition to the above, Fás did not adhere to the public sector policy on foreign travel, it was found.

It was a practice in Fás that senior executives, board members and those who accompanied them on trips could travel first class. This policy enabled senior executives to “trade down” their first-class ticket for two business-class tickets which enabled their spouses to travel free of charge.

The committee said there was no entitlement to first-class travel and any savings from downgrading should have been returned.

Credit cards were another area where the committee found cause for concern.

In a statement last night, Fás welcomed the publication of the report, and said its board had already agreed that whatever additional actions were necessary would be “fully implemented.”