FAS chiefs face further grilling on revelations from watchdog
CURRENT and former senior FAS officials face the prospect of further public grillings on irregularities at the State training agency following the publication today of what is expected to be a damning report by the Comptroller and Auditor General.
The Public Accounts Committee has confirmed it will resume hearings shortly and is set to focus on new revelations contained in C&AG John Buckley's much-anticipated report.
Mr Buckley has been examining a series of issues at FAS and his latest report will primarily focus on excessive advertising and promotional expenditure between 2002 and 2008.
It specifically examines the budgetary controls exercised by FAS management at the time and the strategy under which funds were spent. It also focuses on the procedures used to procure advertising and related services.
PAC chairman Bernard Allen said last night: "We are waiting with great expectation for the publication of the report, the contents of which will be subject to further hearings this autumn."
The PAC found last February that most of the €35m FAS spent on advertising between 2003 and 2007 was spent in an unorthodox manner from a procurement perspective.
The new report's findings could trigger an invitation to the former FAS corporate affairs director Greg Craig to give evidence to the PAC. Mr Craig was on sick leave and later suspended from FAS when hearings were being conducted last year.
But his suspension was lifted and he has since returned to the agency in a different role.
A previous C&AG report questioned several advertising-spend decisions he was responsible for.
The new report will also open up the prospect of former leading FAS officials, including ex-director general Rody Molloy and ex-assistant director general Gerry Pyke, being recalled to answer further questions about their oversight of advertising spending and procurement.
Criticism
A list of witnesses for the forthcoming PAC hearings will be drawn up after the publication of today's report.
Mr Buckley was present as an observer at all five PAC hearings on FAS last November and December. After those hearings, the PAC made a series of findings which were heavily critical of how the corporate affairs division was run and the controls exerted by senior management and the FAS board.
It found no evidence that contracts to the value of €7m were awarded under competitive tendering.
Control systems in the area of corporate affairs were weak and inadequate. The culture within the division was to bypass the controls in place. Certain individuals and companies who were awarded contracts "did not operate at arms length" in their relationship with FAS.
Adequate control structures were not put in place until March 2008, by which stage a lot of public money had been put at risk of being wasted and significant damage had been done to FAS's image.
The PAC also found that the board of FAS did not engage sufficiently with certain issues, with the result that it failed to discharge its responsibilities in regard to ensuring good corporate governance.
It was unclear last night whether the C&AG has advanced inquiries into other issues at FAS, including a major fraud allegedly perpetrated by a former staff member and lavish spending on foreign travel, particularly in connection with the now scrapped Science Challenge Programme.
PAC recommended that the FAS board, currently numbering 17 members, be made smaller and that the automatic rights of unions and employers' groups to make appointments to the board be removed.
Tanaiste Mary Coughlan is expected to bring forward legislation allowing for such changes after the Dail resumes.
- Shane Phelan Investigative Correspondent
