Forget rulebook, it's just wrong
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OVER a period of four years, the State training agency FAS spent €643,000 on transatlantic travel for the purpose of promoting the Science Challenge programme, from which Irish scientists benefited. In the same period, it paid almost €48,000 in air fares for journeys undertaken by its chief, Rody Molloy, sometimes with his wife.
Mr Molloy did nothing wrong. He defended himself on the Pat Kenny radio show yesterday, saying: "We broke no rules or regulations. At the time we were doing it, it was standard practice."
Standard practice, certainly, in many quarters, and downright parsimonious by comparison with some. When the chiefs of the US automobile industry flew to Washington to beg for help for their ailing industry, they did not fly business class. They did not fly first class. They used their private jets -- much to the annoyance of some members of Congress.
And the amounts expended by FAS were small in the context of its budget of €1bn a year and the size of its payroll, 2,200 people. Far smaller still are the sums that provoked so much mockery yesterday: pay-per-view movies in hotel rooms at $12.71 upwards, $942.53 for a round of golf, €419 postage on a corporate gift presented in Florida to a visiting Irish minister.
At high levels of business and administration, this is a tiny part of the privileges that are taken for granted. Mr Molloy had the misfortune to give his interview yesterday at a time of crisis and of forced austerity for the "little people".
What he did broke no rules, infringed no norms. But it sounded wrong.
A bigger question: was it ever right? Whatever about motor manufacturers, was it ever right for Irish government departments and State agencies to spend incomparably large amounts of taxpayers' money on projects of which those taxpayers have little or no knowledge?
Clearly it was not and is not, and the disclosures raise wider and more important questions. The much-trumpeted public service reform, if it happens, must address itself to much more than pay and numbers. It must address the issues of accountability and supervision.
And these are political questions as much as administrative questions -- indeed, more so. Yesterday Fine Gael seized on the interview as a stick with which to beat the Government. This was a legitimate political tactic. It drew forth just one sentence in response from Taoiseach Brian Cowen. Is this Government flying in the clouds, eyes closed tight?
