A SPECIAL inquiry is to be held into the effectiveness of the management and control systems in Fás, the training and employment authority which has a budget this year of €1 billion.
The request yesterday from the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Mary Coughlan, to the Comptroller Auditor General (CAG), John Buckley, comes after a series of media reports based on harshly critical Fás internal audit reports, and a report earlier this year from the CAG on compliance with procurement rules at the authority.
Earlier this month Ms Coughlan met the director general of Fás, Rody Molloy, and the Fás chairman, Peter McLoone, to discuss the damaging reports. They suggested to her that an inquiry into compliance with expenditure and procurement controls might be needed to restore public confidence in the training and employment authority.
Fás internal audit reports have raised serious questions about controls within the organisation and about the expenditure of public funds. One internal report on the authority's corporate affairs division came after a lengthy inquiry that included the examination of a senior employee's e-mails, and the interviewing of parties outside Fás who did business with it.
Yesterday Ms Coughlan said that "as a follow-up to the concerns raised by the publication, before the summer, of the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General into the procurement practices in Fás", she had decided to ask the CAG to report on the effectiveness of the management and control systems that are in place generally across the organisation. "This examination is to ensure that appropriate public procurement procedures exist to prevent or detect irregularities or wrongdoing and, in particular, examine and report on the activities of the Fás corporate affairs area since 2000."
Ms Coughlan emphasised that she is committed to ensuring value for money and the best possible use of scarce public resources in these challenging economic and employment market circumstances.
The Fine Gael spokesman on enterprise, trade and employment, Leo Varadkar, said Ms Coughlan "has effectively expressed no confidence in the Fás leadership". "It is clear that today's announcement of a special investigation into Fás expenditure means that the Tánaiste placed no confidence in Fás's reassurances or in senior management to rectify serious funding anomalies."