THE DEPARTMENT of Enterprise, Trade and Employment demonstrated a “lack of will” when evaluating a controversial Fás training programme, the chairman of the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee has claimed.
Fine Gael TD Bernard Allen said it took five years for the department to complete a “value for money” report on a programme run by the national training and employment agency.
“There was a whole problem in relation to monitoring of courses, the evaluation of courses and the effectiveness of the courses,” Mr Allen told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland programme yesterday.
The controversy about the competency development programme, which cost €126 million up to 2008, is the latest in a series of scandals regarding spending controls at Fás. Asked if the agency was now fit for purpose, Mr Allen said Fás had been “dysfunctional” but he was convinced there was great will at the top of the agency to change. “I have an impression myself that the man at the top now is fit for purpose,” he added.
There were major challenges facing the agency, with over 400,000 people out of work, Mr Allen said. He said the report on the programme submitted by the department to the committee last week was different from the one published on Wednesday.
“So therefore we were at a slight disadvantage as to what report we were dealing with.” He also said the committee received “very unsatisfactory explanations” as to why this was the case at the meeting.
A spokesman for the department said he did not wish to add anything to the remarks made by department secretary general Seán Gorman at the committee.
Mr Gorman told the committee the competency development programme was set up to meet the need to upskill the workforce. A total of 123,000 people had been trained under the programme between 2004 and 2008, he said.
Meanwhile, Fás director general Paul O’Toole conceded the agency had had “a very bad time in terms of our corporate image” in the last number of years.
“My job and the job of my colleagues is to look to the future and the immediate needs of the literally hundreds of thousands of people that we’re out trying to support at the moment.”
Mr O’Toole said Fás was trying to deal with the controversies, “most of them in the full glare of publicity”, in a systematic way. The agency was also delivering cost savings and operating with 11 per cent less staff than it had 18 months ago.
“We are reviewing our training provision root and branch. So all we can do to restore confidence in Fás is do the job that we are meant to do,” he said.
Labour TD Róisín Shortall accused the department of sponsoring what appeared to be a “slush fund” at the committee meeting on Thursday.
Ms Shortall also claimed most of the members of the Fás subcommittee which operated the programme were associated with social partnership bodies which benefited from the funds.
