Fás had to make €127k tax settlement

One of the country’s most controversial quangos, Fás, was forced into a substantial tax settlement before it closed down late last year.

The former training agency, which has now been reconstituted as Solas, revealed that the Revenue Commissioners discovered it had underpaid its taxes from 2006 to 2008.

The audit covered unpaid PAYE and PRSI amounts and led to an overall settlement of €127,643 which included interest and penalties of €21,078.

The agency said Revenue had agreed not to publish its name on the list of defaulters because it had volunteered information about its liability.

Revenue contacted Fás about the findings of its audit in September 2013, shortly before the organisation ceased to exist.

The details of the settlement were revealed in the organisation’s final accounts, which were laid before the Oireachtas yesterday.

In his preface to the financial statements, the Comptroller and Auditor General Seamus McCarthy noted that the agency had also completed an investigation into alleged fraud at the Tipperary Hostel. The accounts state this was finalised in 2013 and identified potential inappropriate expenditure of €150,000.

“A detailed report was passed over to the Department of Social Protection as this department became responsible for all job initiative schemes on 1st January, 2012. Internal Audit has liaised with the gardaí who are investigating this matter,” it said.

The accounts also show that the agency took heavy hits on misguided property decisions in Offaly.

In 2003 the government decided to decentralise Fás to Birr and paid €1.5m for a site to build a new headquarters. In November 2011 the current Government abandoned the project and almost the entire value of the site has been written off. In a linked move, the organisation also wrote off more than €1.1m in improvements it made to other properties it was leasing in Birr.

The bulk of this related to a building it had rented while it was waiting to construct a premises for the decentralised offices.

In 2007 the company had spent €1.1m doing up a property it had leased for 10 years to allow time for the new headquarters in Birr to be finished.

This premises was vacated in December 2012 and the remaining five years on the lease were broken.

Another property it owns at the Cabra Training Centre in Dublin was also the subject of a substantial write -off, having remained vacant since 2010 after the agency spent €7.3m on its development.

The complex was said to be worth €4m in 2012; a portion of it was sold for €700,000 in 2013 and the remaining property has now been valued at zero.