Committee says there was no entitlement to first-class travel

FÁS EXECUTIVES and board members wasted public money through excessive foreign travel, according to the report by the Public Accounts Committee.

The practice of buying first-class travel tickets led to inappropriate charges on the Fás account, the report says.

The State training agency should not have paid for flight tickets for former board members, journalists and spouses of executives, and costs of Ministers and Ministers of State should have been borne by their departments, it adds.

Fás spent on average €600,000 a year on flights and subsidence.

The committee finds there was a need for executives to travel to overseas jobs fairs to help meet labour market shortages at home. It accepts the development of a Discover Science programme with Nasa in the US also necessitated a degree of foreign travel.

However, the committee says it has established that there is “no entitlement” to first-class travel and that any downgrading of ticket should result in the saving being returned to the State.

“This is clear policy dating back to 1992. Fás now accepts that this practice was inappropriate.”

The Discover Science programme gave rise to an “inordinate” amount of foreign travel, almost €400,000 in four years, according to the report.

The director of corporate affairs travelled to Florida 13 times in three years, while one deputy director in corporate affairs travelled on 15 occasions between 2003 and 2007.

The report says the limits available to senior executives on credit cards were excessive. “We can only conclude it is indicative of a culture where due regard was not being paid to minimising costs.”

One executive had a credit card limit of €76,000 – described by the report as “excessive in the extreme” – while the director of corporate affairs put €223,838 through his card between 2003 and 2007. The limit on credit cards has since been reduced to €7,000. The report also calls for a review of the disciplinary code within Fás, and says the code used by civil servants should be applied to all State agencies.

It says Freedom of Information legislation should be changed to allow Oireachtas committees to make requests, and public bodies should not be allowed to rely on data protection rules to withhold information.

The committee has urged the Comptroller and Auditor General to undertake further investigations into spending issues at the agency.