Seán Haughey (Dublin North Central, Fianna Fail)

In September to October 2009, the European Commission carried out an European Structural Fund audit mission that included an audit of FÁS expenditure. The final report of this mission was issued in February 2010 and raised two areas of concern for the auditors. The first area where issues arose from this audit was in contract extensions and tendering procedures not being properly followed. This involved €20,040 expenditure, or 0.1% of the total FÁS claim. The second and main area was the reconciliation of estimated costs to actual payments for contracted training for the unemployed. This was related to the information technology system used to account for this expenditure and it resulted in an incorrect ESF claim of approximately €165,000, or 0.2% of the total FÁS claim. It is anticipated that new information technology system will be fully operational by 1 January 2011 and will address the European Commission's primary concern in this area, as well as prevent a recurrence of this event in the future. In March 2010, the European Commission auditors carried out a follow up audit on the FÁS issues raised. A draft report on this audit was received by my Department on 25 June 2010 and was responded to within the two month deadline set by the European Commission. The Commission has instructed that the draft audit report be treated as confidential and, as it is not intended for publication, I am not in a position to describe its findings.

The resulting final audit report has not been formally received from the European Commission to date. However, I can confirm that no EU funds have been lost by Ireland on this matter to date and, as it is intended that alternative spending will be substituted for the above amounts in a future claim, it is anticipated that there will be no loss to the Exchequer.

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