Martin Ferris (Kerry North, Sinn Fein)

I thank the Labour Party for the opportunity to speak tonight. What benefit or advantage from the scandal at FÁS have those who have been left unemployed by a Government-fuelled recession? Was too much money spent on training initiatives or on unemployment schemes? If any excess in expenditure arose in FÁS, it should have related to training, upskilling and providing employment and opportunities for the thousands of people unemployed. There was massive institutionalised waste of public funds by Government and senior management in FÁS. Who would have thought that the main beneficiaries in the State training and employment authority would be those secure enough in their jobs to go on holidays to Florida while the recession hit those who needed FÁS most.

Today we see the publication of the Labour Services (Amendment) Bill. While we welcome actions to improve the governance of FÁS and the strengthening of accountability, some of the provisions are laughable. The greatest farce is the power bestowed on the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, in consultation with the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Minister for Education and Science, to select the members of the board of FÁS. The Minister, Deputy Coughlan, gave Rody Molloy an extremely generous golden handshake on his way out without getting legal advice.

The Minister should not be empowered to make such decisions when her blatant incompetence has been plastered all over the news in recent weeks for all and sundry to see. Reform has to be implemented as quickly as possible. Sinn Féin already called for the Tánaiste to resign. She has stood over the indecent golden handshake given to the disgraced former director general, Rody Molloy, and has shown herself to be incapable of addressing the unemployment crisis and getting FÁS to do the job it was set up to do.

Unemployment continues to grow daily. Young men and women join the dole queues in alarming numbers. The unemployment rate in the country is more than 12.5%, but in my county it is now 27%. A new board needs to address the dire unemployment crisis and put in place training and upskilling programmes to meet the needs of unemployed workers. That this mess has been dragging on for the past 18 months is hugely damaging. Time has been lost, during which training and upskilling to assist in economic recovery could have been put in place.

Rody Molloy should have been sacked, fired, booted out and shamed for his disgraceful behaviour in FÁS, but he was not. He was allowed to resign and save face having squandered millions of euros of taxpayers' money. What we have seen is double standards in government. Government officials across the board have looked after their own by making sure they got a little extra something, while workers across the State have been feeling this recession harder than anybody else. Where was the Government intervention and support when, for example, the Thomas Cook workers had to protest in the headquarters of that company after being brought before the High Court for seeking a decent remuneration for themselves? Rather than helping such workers, Government officials went to a seedy backroom to negotiate with Rody Molloy, fluff up his best egg and give him a pat on the back. The FÁS expenditure scandal is another example of a branch of Government having no accountability. We should not have to wait for resignations. There should be no hesitation in sacking these people on the spot. It should be a case of "do not pass go and do not collect your executive pension".

Action needs to be taken now. We need to put in place a framework to monitor and enforce accountability procedures. These people are not above the law and should not remain in privileged positions when they readily abuse their power. There is palatable anger among the ordinary citizens of this country as they struggle to hold onto their jobs, their incomes are slashed and Government taxes further reduce their take-home pay. The Government has responded to that anger by establishing NAMA and offering extravagant pensions to directors. It is totally out of touch with the people. It has demonstrated its incompetence time and again. It has neither the brains nor the brawn to get Ireland back to work and out of recession. It has no mandate at this time. It is so compromised by its close relationship with developers, bankers and oil companies that it is unable and unwilling to relate to working-class people. An ideology of greed has manifested itself among this country's political elite, including the Government and its cronies. The Tánaiste has suffered from ostrich syndrome over the last few months as this expenditure wastage was revealed. The Minister, Deputy Harney, was embroiled in this scandalous affair during her reign as Tánaiste. Senior civil servants also enjoyed the fiesta at FÁS. It is apparent that burgeoning unemployment, cuts in social welfare and excessive taxes do not affect those in the Government's golden circle.

Not only do we want an end to this behaviour, but we also want to know how it came about. Who was to blame? Where does the buck stop? How was this allowed to happen? The answer is simple. As a former Member of this House said on television last night, successive Fianna Fáil Governments have developed a culture of corruption, cronyism and golden handshakes. NAMA is a case in point. The only beneficiaries of this form of Government intervention will be bankers and developers. There is no NAMA for ordinary people, such as the young couples who are currently in debt to the banks, struggling to pay their mortgages or whose houses have been repossessed. Young couples have been evicted by banks, which have then re-let those houses to those they have evicted. The taxpayers of Ireland did not consent to this when they were forced to bail out the banks. The banks, the developers and their political cronies have abused this country's system for their own greedy needs. There is a culture of cronyism and corruption within FÁS and within the Government. Deputies Coughlan, Harney and Martin have been embroiled in this scandal. The controls that were in place were simply bypassed, public money was squandered shamelessly and senior management oversight did not exist. The key issue that has to be addressed is the weakness in the system that allowed such wastage and disregard for taxpayers' money to occur without being uncovered. We need to consider how these indignities were dealt with.

The Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment is responsible to the Dáil for overall expenditure, employment and labour force policy. How well has she done to date? That her home county has the fifth highest rate of unemployment in the State speaks volumes in itself. The result of the referendum on the Lisbon treaty in her constituency was a further reflection of the dissatisfaction of citizens with her job performance. The underlying truth is that the buck stops with the Tánaiste. I commend the Labour Party on proposing this motion. I hope the legislation that was published today will deal with this problem, although I have my doubts. We do not want the circumstances over which the Tánaiste has presided to arise again. I refer, for example, to the expenditure of €600,000 on a television advertisement that was never broadcast. Similarly, €9,000 was spent on a car for a raffle that was never held, while a further €622,000 cannot be accounted for.

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