Fás damaged, warns former director

A FORMER director of Fás, now director general of IBEC, has claimed the state training agency’s “brand has been damaged” by the recent overspending debacle and admitted there had been failures in the organisation.

However, Danny McCoy warned against a knee-jerk reaction against Fás and said it needed to be reconstructed so as to be made more responsive.

Mr McCoy resigned as a director of Fás when he took up his elevated position with IBEC in June.

However, while he is no longer among their number, in an interview with Industrial Relations News he has defended the people with whom he shared the board of the state training agency following claims by the investigation by the Comptroller and Auditor General John Buckley who, in an 81-page report, revealed a litany of waste including:

* More than 600,000 was frittered away on a TV advertisement that was not broadcast.

* Fás bosses paid for a car that was never delivered, and was to be used in a raffle that didn’t take place.

* Overall spending of €48 million was €18m over-budget, while bosses spent 66% more than the agreed limit on advertising alone.

* Spending on jobs fairs was allowed to run €6.1m over-budget.

“There was a certain laxity during the Celtic Tiger era. Board members would probably be more inquisitive now,” said Mr McCoy. “A lot of controls were bypassed at the time without the knowledge of the directors. When the board has resigned fully, it will be open to it (the former board) to put its side of the story.”

IRN says key board members in Fás are unhappy with how their performance has been portrayed in the recent controversy stirred up by the Comptroller and Auditor General report which exposed the overspend and sparked the expected mass resignation of board members.

Some of those individuals believe the findings of the C&AG were already discovered by the internal Fás internal audit function under the direction of the audit committee of the board.

Meanwhile, Mr McCoy has said top-level salaries in the public sector should not be subjected to massive cuts in isolation but that all salaries should be examined.

“I don’t believe in huge tokenism from a small cadre,” he said.

“Such gestures are often perceived as being cynical. All salaries in the public sector have to be in play.”

His organisation IBEC is among a number waiting to see if there is any chance of social partnership with the Government and trade unions being revitalised in order to reach an agreed mechanism of establishing an agreed economic recovery model.