WHAT is it with FAS and cars? First, there was the Toyota car that was raffled at the FAS Opportunities Fair in the RDS in Dublin in 2000 and subsequently vanished without trace.

Then there was the Audi A6 company car that was provided to FAS director general Rody Molloy. He was allowed to keep it -- at a cost of €23,000 to the taxpayer -- even though incredible events at the state training agency such as the missing Toyota and his first-class flights to Florida were out in the open.

But Mr Molloy was able to drive out of FAS headquarters in Dublin to his home in Kildare with a pension top-up of almost €1.1m, a tax-free lump sum of €333,000 and an ex-gratia payment of €111,000.

So who wants to take responsibility for making the decision?

Not Tanaiste Mary Coughlan for starters. She has spent a week now avoiding awkward questions about the Audi A6, knowing full well that it could fuel even more public outrage about Mr Molloy's golden handshake.

The Irish Independent repeatedly asked her about it, via questions to her press officer and even in person at the count centre in Donegal during the Lisbon Treaty referendum last week. All she would say was that the car was "absolutely not part of any severance package agreed by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, or the Department of Finance".

But everything changed when former FAS chairman Peter McLoone was not content to stay silent and allow the board he chaired to take all the blame for the decision.

Then, in the Dail yesterday, we finally got a straight answer to a straight question. Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny forced Ms Coughlan to admit she had been aware that Mr Molloy wanted to keep his Audi A6. But she was quick to shift the blame back to the FAS board, and did so on the double in case anyone missed the point. "It was not within my remit to sanction that. It was a matter for the board. It went to the board, which made its decision. It was not part of the package sanctioned by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and the Department of Finance."

It must be hard for the opposition listening to this kind of stuff, but thankfully Fine Gael chief whip Paul Kehoe lightened the mood.

"Did she give him a full tank of petrol as well?" he asked. The Dail chamber cracked up, with the exception of Ms Coughlan, naturally. Then it was on to what type of fuel the Audi A6 actually consumed. It was a diesel car, according to Minister for Europe Dick Roche, who obviously knows about more than just the Lisbon Treaty.

Fine Gael's Padraic McCormack joked that it was the "green diesel" used in farm tractors -- which meant he got a shot in at the Green Party.

But Ms Coughlan's handling of the great Audi giveaway shows how the Government has tied itself in knots with its own verbal trickery during the entire FAS controversy.

She is merely a front-seat passenger -- with Taoiseach Brian Cowen in the driving seat. It was he who claimed there had been no legal threat by Mr Molloy in order to get a better severance package.

It took the sting off accusations that his government had erred by failing to seek legal advice on the deal.

But we had already heard the evidence of Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment secretary general Sean Gorman, who said: "It was also made clear that, if the individual [Mr Molloy] believed that he was not being treated reasonably, he would reserve his right to take court action."

So what Mr Cowen -- who, let us not forget, is a qualified solicitor -- meant was: there was no "explicit" legal threat, it was merely an "implicit legal threat".

There is of course a danger that cynics -- and there are plenty of them out there -- will regard this as somewhat Orwellian.

IT was George Orwell who wrote in 1946: "Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

There have been plenty of examples since then of politicians using verbal trickery.

Maggie Thatcher famously denied accusations that her Tory party would double VAT to pay for income-tax cuts before the 1979 British general election. "We will not double it," she said. She certainly didn't. The Tories increased VAT from 8pc to just 15pc, and you can imagine how grateful the British voters were.

But there is only so much you can do with verbal trickery. And the Government's disastrous handling of the FAS issue means that it is rapidly running out of road.

There are even more tricky issues which it will not be able to overtake.

The latest is the declaration that former FAS Director of Corporate Services Greg Craig is willing to testify before the Public Accounts committee for the first time.

He has been at the centre of the controversy due to his control of its massive FAS advertising and promotions budget.

His evidence could well cause far more embarrassment for the Government than an Audi A6.

Irish Independent