Responsibility for Fás divided between three departments

TRAINING AGENCY:RESPONSIBILITY FOR State training agency Fás is to be split between three departments, in a move described as "joined-up thinking" by a Government spokesman, but criticised as a "botch job" by the Opposition.

The jobseeking and community employment services of Fás will come under the auspices of the Department of Social and Family Affairs, which will be renamed the Department of Social Protection. Responsibility for skills and training policies will be reallocated to the Department of Education and Science, which will be renamed the Department of Education and Skills.

Before yesterday, Fás was the sole responsibility of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, which is to become the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Innovation.

Announcing the measures in the Dáil, Taoiseach Brian Cowen said the changes would help to establish the conditions for job creation and support people who lost their jobs.

Transferring the training activities of Fás to the education portfolio would mean that the agency’s courses would be more closely aligned with the education and training activities of the VECs, the institutes of technology and programmes such as Youthreach, Mr Cowen said.

Moving employment services to the Department of Social Protection would allow for the “integration of the income support programme through the social welfare system”, he added.

A spokeswoman for Fás said the agency would wait to receive more details of the changes before commenting. Fine Gael spokesman on enterprise, trade and employment Leo Varadkar criticised the Government’s departmental restructuring.

“No Government department now has employment or jobs in its title when the country is facing the worst unemployment crisis in a generation,” Mr Varadkar said.

Splitting the responsibility for Fás between three departments would mean the agency would be overseen by three Ministers who would “inevitably pass the buck from one to the other”, he added.

Fine Gael social and family affairs spokeswoman Olwyn Enright said the Government had missed a chance to provide “one door” for services to the unemployed.

However, the expanded brief of the Department of Education and Skills was welcomed by teacher union TUI, which said it had lobbied for the integration of education and training strategy.

“The distinction between education and training is an artificial one and its elimination is long overdue,” said TUI general secretary Peter MacMemanin.

Danny McCoy of business group Ibec welcomed the reorganisation of responsibilities and said it “should provide a better response to the challenge of getting people back to work”.