Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

The Tánaiste is the Minister in charge of Foras Áiseanna Saothar, or FÁS. Any Deputy in the House can point to areas in the country, the city, the town and other places where FÁS has given very valuable assistance in the development of community facilities. That must be recognised. It is more than a year since I, along with Deputy Varadkar, raised questions in the House about activities within the FÁS organisation at senior level. Last Sunday week, the chairman of FÁS announced on RTE that the entire board would resign. When I raised this matter first the Taoiseach defended the actions of the former chief executive and, as Minister, the Tánaiste said that all matters which were in the public domain were in the past.

We hear a great deal about the Government getting matters right and value for money, seeing that targets are met and objectives are achieved and that the country is run as effectively as it should be. As Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment and as deputy leader of the Government, the Tánaiste presides over FÁS. She either knew these things were going on or she was complicit in them. If that is the case it is a demonstration of utter incompetence. The Tánaiste said these matters were in the past and would never happen again. The board had her full support on two occasions: in February and June. Now the board is to resign in bloc in September. Why has the board lost the confidence of the Government? Is it because of the €600,000 advertisement which was placed and never delivered? Is it about the car that was purchased which never arrived? Or is it about the €622,000 which is now the subject of a file sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions in respect of which nobody seems to know what the money was spent on or where it went? What are the reasons the board has lost the support of the Tánaiste and the Government? Regarding the Tánaiste's previous comments, was she aware of, or complicit in, the actions that were revealed publicly over the past 12 months regarding the higher echelons of FÁS?

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