Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)

I thank Deputy Shortall and the Labour Party for proposing the motion, which the Fine Gael Party is pleased to support without equivocation.

This is a relevant time to discuss FÁS. We have 12.6% unemployment, the third highest in the euro zone behind Belgium and Spain, and there are currently 440,000 people on the live register. While all of us have had a lot to think about this week, in terms of how this House works and the way we run our own operations, we have a great deal to do to change things before people will take us seriously or accept the kind of measures that will be necessary to save this country from the abyss. We should not forget that the overriding issue now facing our country is unemployment and the many more who will continue to lose their jobs as the country remains uncompetitive and fails to take the measures, painful though they may be, which are necessary to restore the country's economy to health.

I should note that FÁS does good work across the country. It is important to acknowledge that. I say it in every interview I do on FÁS - it rarely gets picked up by the media but I would like to again put that on the record. The majority of ordinary FÁS staff do a very good job. During the Lisbon treaty campaign I had the opportunity to meet many of them and while some of them, and Deputies Shortall, Allen and others, were angry with me for highlighting this issue, the majority were glad that the FÁS scandal had been aired and they now rely on us to ensure it is restructured and that its corporate culture changes, whether it is the executive at the top or the bullying and intimidation throughout the organisation by people largely associated with the Government parties seeking preferment for their constituents.

The FÁS scandal has been ongoing for more than a year. It started with anonymous letters, which were initially sent to the Minister, Deputy Harney and were subsequently sent to us, and audit reports which we were able to release to the media. It is important to note that we had great difficulty initially getting that information into the media. I will keep the details for my memoirs, but needless to say one major news company refused to carry the story. I was not surprised when I learned that many journalists were wined and dined, flown first class by FÁS around the world and accommodated. We found out how much money FÁS spent, totally inappropriately, on advertising in a large number of media organisations. The people who spent that money were not just wasting taxpayers' money, they knew exactly what they were doing. They were buying the silence of the Fourth Estate, that is, the media.

In many ways Ministers have not behaved very differently in the preferential treatment they have given to journalists on their ministerial travel over the years. I am glad that silence has now ended and that we can see a real clean-out of this country, starting in the Dáil, moving on to our media and other establishments and all the way down the line to the hundreds of thousands of people in this country who receive tax-funded unvouched expenses, allowances, tax exemptions and other benefits. We now have a great opportunity to clean up this country and turn it into a much better place.

I raised this issue in the Dáil in May 2008 and the Tánaiste's response was that FÁS had clarified its procedures and strengthened its controls and she wanted to know no more about it. Deputy Kenny raised the matter in July 2008. The Taoiseach told us he had the highest regard for Rody Molloy, that he could depend on him at all times and that he would defend him at all times. Subsequently there were revelations in the Sunday Independent by Nick Webb and Senator Shane Ross. The matter was then investigated by the Committee of Public Accounts. We then had a Dáil debate on it and had a series of reports from the Comptroller and Auditor General.

The Tánaiste's attitude to this matter was the same throughout. I do not blame her for FÁS. I do not think she was responsible for the things that went on there. I blame her less than I do her two predecessors, the Minister, Deputy Harney and the Minister, Deputy Martin, but her approach to FÁS was always very clear. This was a bad news story she just wanted to go away and she was prepared to pay any money to make it go away, whether it was pension top-ups, bonuses or a free car. She wanted the story to go away so she could spend her time doing what she wants to do, which is travelling around the country, opening offices and so on. That has been her approach to this issue throughout.

Her approach to the board was similar. First she backed it, then she said she would accept resignations and in between there was some suggestion of a press release supporting its members. We also had the issue of FÁS executives, the people who are most responsible for this and who have largely escaped unscathed. They include people like Greg Craig, a former Fianna Fáil candidate and employee of former Fianna Fáil members of the parliamentary party and someone who received the support of the trade union movement in retaining his job. The extent of the complicity of what has gone on in FÁS is shocking and shameful.

We now have a new board and CEO, but what is missing is political direction and real policy on the sort of training agency we want to have in the future. That must be the most important thing because we need to move on from this scandal and all the other scandals in this country and start to reshape our democracy, public sector and State bodies.

The regional directorate of FÁS corporate on Baggot Street and all that is associated with it costs €150 million a year to fund and most of that does not need to continue. The employment programmes and community employment schemes cost €430 million a year, and they should continue. They are not effective labour market measures. They have an important social role and are now more important than ever, but the appropriate role for such programmes is local government and not a State bureaucracy. The apprenticeships and training integration cost €108 million a year. In many ways our apprenticeship system is the model for apprenticeships in the world and should remain in place, either in a new FÁS or as part of the broader education sector.

Training for people in employment costs €122 million a year and I have serious concerns about the way that money is spent and is farmed out to organisations which had representatives on the boards. We need to examine this issue from scratch, probably using the skillnets model as the more effective way of training people in employment. That is not to say everything in skillnets is perfect but the model is a good one.

Some €248 million is spent on training for employment. There are courses of various quality but the key issue is to provide people with the kind of training they need and not the kind we think they need or that FÁS happens to make available. Perhaps the best way of using that €248 million, which is a lot of money in any one year, is to give people who have been made redundant that money as a voucher which they could then use to get the kind of training they need. If graduates, that may mean going to a higher level institution and doing a masters degree or a PhD. It may mean going to a VEC or to an institution of further education and acquiring the training they need there. We need a model for the delivery of training, with the money going to the person who requires the training or is being made redundant. We should not expect people who have been made redundant to fit into the systems we create for them, what FÁS happens to make available for them or for what they happen to qualify or be eligible.

We also need to have a one stop shop for the unemployed. I do not understand why a person must go to the Department of Social and Family Affairs to get their welfare payments and is then sent to the LES, FÁS or a different partnership, depending on the case. We need to have a simple, straightforward one stop shop for people who are unemployed so they can claim their benefits and enter training straight away. We also need to integrate FÁS with our social welfare system. We need to examine models such as those in Denmark, Holland and other countries which have flexible social welfare systems, where welfare payments are more generous than they are here but are also highly conditional on people agreeing to participate in training and community service. There is a major opportunity to integrate FÁS and the entire welfare system. We should start, in terms of remodelling the system, with those under 25 years of age.

I again thank the Labour Party for tabling this motion. I support it. I thank the members of the Committee of Public Accounts for their role in this. I express my disgust at the Government, Fianna Fáil, the executives in FÁS, who shamelessly continue to hold their jobs, and those in the media who received hospitality from FÁS and continued to write well of it and ill of members of the Committee of Public Accounts. This scandal will go on and on. There is much more to come, and if I could verify and prove it I could put it in the public domain. We must move on from it, rebuild FÁS and remodel the way training and employment works in this country.

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