The chairman of the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee has claimed there was a “lack of will” within the Department of Enterprise when it came to evaluating a controversial Fás training programme.
Fine Gael TD Bernard Allen was commenting on why it took five years for the department to complete a “value for money'” report on the Fás–run Competency Development Programme, which cost €126 million up to 2008.
"There was a whole problem in relation to the monitoring of courses, the evaluation of courses and their effectiveness," he told RTÉ's Morning Ireland programme.
Mr Allen said the report finally submitted by the department to the committee last week differed from the one published on Wednesday. He said the committee received “very unsatisfactory explanations” from department officials at a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee yesterday.
At the meeting, Labour TD Róisín Shortall accused the department of sponsoring what appeared to be a “slush fund”. Ms Shortall said most of the members of the Fás subcommittee which operated programme were associated with social partnership bodies which benefited from the funds.
Secretary general of the Department of Enterprise Seán Gorman told the committee the development programme was set up to meet the need for upskilling of the workforce. In the period 2004-08, a total of 123,000 people had been trained under the programme, he said.
The controversy is just the latest in a series of scandals regarding spending controls at the State training agency.
Asked today if the agency remained “fit for purpose” given the controversies, Mr Allen said Fás was “certainly dysfunctional”, but he remained convinced there was a will at the top of the agency to change. He said there were major challenges facing the agency, with more than 400,000 people currently out of work.
Speaking on the same programme, Fás director general Paul O'Toole admitted the agency had had “a very bad time in terms of its corporate image” in recent years.
“My job, however, is to look to the future and to the needs of the hundreds of thousands of people who have lost their jobs which the agency was trying to support,” he said.
Mr O’Toole said the new executive was trying to deal with the controversies in a systematic way - “most of them in the full glare of publicity” - while delivering cost savings and working with 11 per cent less staff than 18 months ago.
“We are reviewing our training provision root and branch. All that we can do to restore confidence in Fás is do the job we are meant to do,” he said.