THE TRAINING and employment authority Fás last week contacted the Garda about a case of possible fraud within the organisation.
A spokesman for the authority said the matter was quite separate from a case which received publicity earlier this year.
That case arose from an internal Fás inquiry in 2006 into spending and other matters to do with its corporate affairs division, and the inquiry is ongoing. No details of the latest case are known.
In an interview with RTÉ television yesterday, the director general of Fás, Rody Molloy, responded to yesterday's report in The Irish Times about an internal audit report that was critical of financial controls for a new in-company employee training programme established by Fás in 2006. He said the authority was the second largest State agency in terms of annual spend and that internal audits were regularly commissioned in all areas.
However, if the content of the reports were to continually appear in the media, the ability of the internal audit system to work effectively would be diminished.
Yesterday's newspaper report was based on a report released by Fás under a Freedom of Information Act request. It is the second such report released by the authority so far this year and both have raised concerns about internal controls.
Fine Gael enterprise spokesman Leo Varadkar responded to the report by calling for an overhaul of the authoritys leadership structures.
"Two internal audit reports on Fás which have been made public in recent months have raised very serious questions about the way in which massive amounts of taxpayers' money is being spent. Yet there is no evidence that either Fás or the Government has taken any action to ensure that taxpayers get value for money from this state agency."
He said the Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment, Mary Coughlan and the board of Fás have ultimate responsibility for addressing these problems and making sure they do not recur.
Labour Party spokeswoman on finance Joan Burton described the content of the internal audit report as "alarming".
"Financial controls, particularly in relation to the €19 million spent in 2006 , appear to have been completely inadequate."
She said Fás had only itself to blame if its €1 billion budget came under increased scrutiny.
