Shane Ross (Dublin South, Independent)

Thank you. A few weeks ago, the Government launched its jobs initiative in a great fanfare of triumph and publicity. A few days ago, the US Chamber of Commerce announced that there were 2,000 jobs vacant in the multinational sector here, especially in the areas of science, mathematics and technology. It seems a strange reflection on Government policy that there are 440,000 unemployed people here crying out for jobs, yet there are 2,000 vacancies which cannot be filled. What are the job creating quangos up to? Why were they not ready for this problem which has now arisen?

In particular, what has happened to FÁS, the €1 billion per annum bloated quango which is supposed to be in charge of training and employment in Ireland? Why is there so little information about FÁS? I made the mistake of looking for the FÁS annual report in the Library last night, but I could only get the annual report for 2009. I made inquiries about this issue this morning. In blatant breach of its statutory requirement, FÁS has not been able to produce its accounts on time by 30 June of this year. This quango has been surrounded by controversy and scandal for a long time. To find that it cannot produce its accounts begs the question as to what is going on in this training agency. Is it still in the same sort of chaos that it was before?

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