Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

During the recent referendum campaign, I was struck by the number of times that FÁS employees stepped out from the shadows to speak to me, while at the same time looking over their shoulder, possibly in case somebody from Fianna Fáil was listening in. They were people in the middle ranks of FÁS doing their jobs and anxious to provide services to the 400,000 people who are unemployed. They felt ashamed, perturbed and angry to the point of despair at what had happened to the organisation. Person after person identified a feeling among staff in FÁS that it is essentially an organisation which, although a public service organisation, has heavy political influences, particularly from Fianna Fáil, that make it a by-word for the sort of crony capitalism and crony public service that nobody in this country wants or can afford.

The organisation was spending around €1 billion in public money at a time when this country had practically full employment. Now that we have a massive and growing unemployment problem, it does not seem to be able to turn around and drop the things that it was doing, many of which were generated by an excess of funds in the organisation, and start spending every penny wisely in enabling and empowering people to get back into the jobs market and to become employed again. At the moment, FÁS seems to be like the Titanic. We know the iceberg is there, we know FÁS is there, but the Minister and her Ministers of State seem unable to confront the enormity of the task that faces them on behalf of taxpayers and citizens in this country to give hope and opportunity to those 426,000 people who are unemployed.

FÁS took over from the VECs whole areas of apprenticeships and apprentice related training. Now that we have many qualified apprentices with nothing to do, we have a FÁS organisation which is sclerotic and unable to respond and give hope to people. The Labour Party has put forward a series of proposals about graduate placement schemes, graduate internship and graduate opportunity schemes. The Minister gave herself a pat on the back last night, and her response and that of the Minister for Social and Family Affairs and the Minister for Education and Science, is to create a vague and unspecified 2,000 places or opportunities. This is the sum total of her response to the desperate situation that pertains to people who have graduated and qualified to become teachers, plumbers, carpenters and so on. They were educated with an expectation that they would find employment in this country and now find that they cannot do so. That is the biggest challenge facing FÁS, and that is why people are so angry at the revelations that have emerged.

Mr. Molloy was enabled with a departure package of about €1 million, having acknowledged in a public interview that his actions were inappropriate. We were told that this was provided on legal advice. As my colleague, Deputy Shortall, asked, where was the legal advice? We know the Minister for Finance is a senior counsel, something he mentions frequently. He signed off on the package, as pointed out by the Minister, Deputy Coughlan. However, it does not seem to have crossed his mind that in saying adios to Mr. Molloy, the taxpayer, in a country where money has become a very scarce commodity - particularly with regard to public funds - might have sought some value for money.

The people who have served on the audit board of FÁS have spent a significant amount of time over the past year and a half trying to get to the core of the 22 or so issues - the ones we know about - that have arisen with regard to FÁS spending. It is important that the Minister confirm that all of that audit work will be allowed to be completed when she introduces the new legislation. The former director general of the IMF has said that when it goes into a country it knows that unless the government of the day is prepared to look in the eye the senior people in the country and tell them things must change, reform will not happen. When the Minister, Deputy Coughlan, introduces the new legislation, will there be a full inquiry into all of the audits that have been conducted and the others that are to come, inquiring into unoccupied premises where vast amounts of public money were spent throughout the country, and will they be published?

There has been ferocious criticism from some quarters about the nature and size of the FÁS board which was so big it was unwieldy. It reflected the times of social partnership and, in particular, the times and influence in the organisation of the former Taoiseach, Deputy Bertie Ahern. However, if the social partnership element goes, will we, instead of having a social partnership board, have a crony capitalist Fianna Fáil board in its place? That would be worse. Will we end up with the friends of Fianna Fáil, with a few Green Party people added in for decoration, dominating the new board? If that is not to be the case, I challenge the Minister to take her nominations to the relevant sub-committee of the Dáil and to have the people who have agreed to or applied to serve on the board subject to an oversight process. This would be a friendly but fair and rigorous oversight process, as is found in most parliaments, particularly in the United States. If we are to continue to spend €1 billion on FÁS, we must ensure the people on the board are not the usual friends of Fianna Fáil but people who are prepared to turn the Titanic around in the interest of the 400,000 people who are unemployed.

As Albert Reynolds said: "It is the little things that catch you out." The board gave a package, but forgot to mention the car. What is a car worth €20,000 or so to the people at the top of FÁS? That amount is so small in the grand scheme of things for an organisation with a budget of €1 billion. However, for taxpayers who were happy to pay their taxes and who hoped their taxes would contribute to education and help the unemployed get a second chance, the car was the last straw.

I am sorry the Minister of State is not accompanied by the Minister, Deputy Mary Coughlan, and by the former Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Micheál Martin, the man who commissioned so many reports he will have a longer row of library shelves in the British Museum than any other Irish politician, and by the previous Minister, Deputy Mary Harney, who travelled the world with FÁS and who has always been rather harsh about the public sector. However, when she was involved with FÁS, she never had anything critical to say about it. If Fianna Fáil can turn the culture around, if the Minister can subject her nominees to honest and rigorous assessment, we may then feel that Fianna Fáil cronyism has been contained to some small extent.

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