It's time for reform: this state agency is just not up to the job
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Thursday June 04 2009
ROOMS at the Honolulu Hilton and the Waldorf Astoria. Rounds of golf at some of Ireland's most exclusive courses. Luxury trappings one should hardly associate with a state training agency.
But, sadly, this latest round of revelations is only the most recent in a litany of spending scandals at FAS.
Over a seven-year period, FAS officials spent thousands of euro of taxpayers' money. Tens of thousands were spent on golf, and a staggering €40,000 was spent on FAS board meetings alone.
The revelations, disclosed to Fine Gael under the Freedom of Information Act, are yet another example of the sort of wasteful spending tolerated and encouraged by the Fianna Fail Government and its financial cheerleaders, Charlie McCreevy and Brian Cowen.
Just as startling is the fact that the Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, stood shoulder to shoulder with the FAS hierarchy and defended it to the hilt in the Dail. This is the same Taoiseach who talks about the need to reform the public sector, while presiding over the waste of taxpayers' money and gross economic mismanagement at government level.
With unemployment set to reach 400,000 and the country in deep recession, we urgently need an agency like FAS to get it back to work. But FAS is simply unable to provide the training and upskilling we now need on a massive scale.
FAS is the system at its very worst. It operates at arm's length from the Government, manages its own €1bn budget and is not accountable to the Dail.
Its board is dominated by vested interests representing trade unions and big business who funnel millions in grants to their own organisations.
The unemployed, trainees and taxpayers have no say at executive level. Yet FAS was set up for their benefit.
These revelations have seriously wounded FAS. Sadly, they have also damaged the reputation of hundreds of FAS employees who run training centres, apprenticeships and community employment schemes.
This is unfortunate as the vast majority do a really great job. We must work to ensure this carelessness with taxpayers' money never happens again.
The time has come for a radical overhaul of FAS. We should release training centres and apprenticeships from central control.
The thousands of redundant apprentices should be given a government guarantee that they can complete their apprenticeships.
Community employment schemes currently run by FAS do good work and should be expanded -- and there must be no cutbacks in training for people still in employment.
FAS should take advantage of the growing number of people whose hours are being cut by offering them training, while the Skillnets network must be expanded, not cut back.
We should also consider freeing up some of the FAS budget to provide 'training and education vouchers' to the newly redundant, who could then buy the kind of training or higher education that they want from FAS, institutes of technology, universities or VECs. This would inject citizen choice and competition into the sector.
The FAS scandal proves Fianna Fail does not have the will or the courage to drive real change and reform.
It rubbished our warnings and stood by the wrongdoers even as the evidence mounted. Fianna Fail cannot change the system. It is the system.
Leo Varadkar TD is Fine Gael's spokesman on enterprise, trade and employment
- Leo Varadkar
