Official ‘sorry’ for allowing TDs be misled over funds

A SENIOR Department of Enterprise official was accused of allowing the head of his department mislead an Oireachtas Committee about concerns over a multi-million euro Fás training scheme.

Department assistant secretary Dermot Mulligan yesterday apologised to TDs for failing to correct his boss at a previous committee meeting over whether alarms were raised about Fás projects.

The Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) had heard in July from department secretary general Sean Gorman, who said that no concerns were raised about the Competency Development Programme (CDP), which paid out €167 million to employers to upskill staff between 2003 and 2009.

It has since emerged that a principal officer who oversaw the CDP projects wrote to Mr Mulligan in late 2006 outlining problems with the Fás scheme and calling for a “forensic audit” of projects.

Mr Mulligan yesterday admitted to TDs that he had failed at the July committee hearing to tell his superior, Mr Gorman, that problems were raised in writing about the scheme.

He said he had forgotten about the correspondence on the day as it was sent a number of years ago.

But PAC chairman Bernard Allen accused Mr Mulligan of allowing his boss to “mislead the committee” and of not raising the issue about the department official’s alarming letter on the day.

Mr Mulligan apologised to the committee.

Mr Gorman wrote to PAC this week reiterating that when he appeared before TDs in July he knew nothing about the concerns.

The department head did not attend yesterday’s hearing after being involved in a car crash, Mr Allen said.

Labour’s Pat Rabbitte queried Mr Mulligan as to why a separate letter from the same frustrated department official about problems within Fás was not forwarded to the then-Enterprise Minister Michael Martin in early 2007.

Mr Mulligan said the letter was not sent to the minister because the department did not need it as it had a huge amount of detail on the CDP already coming to it.

The Labour TD criticised the department official’s decision not to send the list of complaints about Fás through to the minister. He said: “He was in blissful ignorance of it because you decided it shouldn’t get to his desk.”

Meanwhile, it has also emerged that Fás paid twice its original estimate for lands in Birr, Co Offaly, to decentralise 40 staff.

The 5.7 acres were originally priced by property consultants Hamilton Osbourne King for Fás at €140,000 an acre but were bought at €275,000 an acre in 2005 for around €1.5 million.

The lands remain undeveloped today and will remain so until a review of decentralisation is completed by the Government next year, the committee heard.

Just 14 staff have since moved to the area and were working out of a technical park in an office being leased for nearly €100,000 a year that had cost €1m to fit out with furniture and equipment, Fás admitted.