Pádraic McCormack (Galway West, Fine Gael)

I do not know if any other Cabinet members were aware, none of them have admitted they were. I do not know what happens at Cabinet level, perhaps it is a matter of Cabinet confidentiality. The Green Party Ministers, however, have stated clearly they were not aware of this deal. They are aware of it now and seem to accept it as part of the price of staying in Government, they do not seem too concerned about it from what I can see.

We have lately discovered that, on top of the generous settlement given to Mr. Molloy, he also drove off in a car. Is this the same car exposed at the meeting of the Committee of Public Accounts, the car that was purchased for a raffle, paid for and never delivered? The committee could not establish where the car paid for out of public funds went or if it is indeed the car Mr. Molloy drove away in. I would like to know, if it is possible at this stage to get a clear answer to anything that has happened at this level.

There was collusion between the chief executive of FÁS and the board of directors, especially as they travelled abroad together at great expense to the State, where they all seemed to have a good time. Most of them had bank cards they could use to charge up extraordinary amounts to FÁS during their deliberations abroad. The science programme they were visiting has been cancelled, although I do not know why they were sending FÁS people to it. Was the intention to send them into space? I do not know what they were doing there, except having a good time at taxpayers' expense.

It is extraordinary that at a time when there was practically full employment, we were spending €40 million on advertising and promotion of fairs, unnecessarily promoting FÁS when there was no need to spend such amounts on advertising. FÁS had an annual budget of €1 billion from the taxpayer to run its affairs and it seems that coming to the end of each year, if the budget was not spent, someone invented another advertising campaign to waste another €500,000. Some €600,000 was spent on a television advertisement that never appeared, a criminal waste of taxpayers' money. The FÁS executive, to get another €1 billion, was justifying the expenditure of €1 billion the previous year, no matter how it was wasted.

That amount has now been cut back, following the revelations from the Committee of Public Accounts. I pay tribute to members of the committee from all parties in the way they have teased this out, at times getting this information from board members was like pulling teeth. They diligently stuck to their task. This has given FÁS workers on the ground a bad name. We must acknowledge that they have done great work on community schemes. If they claim expenses, they must produce receipts for everything they buy, be it a spade, shovel or wheelbarrow. If FÁS was run at the top in the same way, we would certainly have a better organisation.

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