Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I would appreciate if the Minister answered the questioned I asked. He did not say he has confidence in PAS.

I raised this issue previously. At the time, the Minister had not even met representatives from Fáilte Ireland. It took the Minister six months or so to meet representatives from Fáilte Ireland. Under the Acts, the authority has to get the Minister to sign off on the chief executive and the procedure. Fáilte Ireland brought this to the Minister but he had not even met representatives from Fáilte Ireland at that stage. I do not have confidence in the process conducted.

Fáilte Ireland is actually advertising positions on PAS now. It seems to have changed its belief system in terms of how it goes about recruitment, which is very interesting.

As a former journalist and a former Opposition Member, Deputy Ross would have waxed lyrical about the waste of money that is going on here. Ultimately, Fáilte Ireland is funded by the taxpayer and it is wasting €58,000 on a recruitment process that can be done professionally and as well, if not better, by PAS. Does the Minister have confidence in PAS? Will it be used by the other agencies or is the Minister going to continue to allow the waste of taxpayers' money when we have a perfectly good process that is used by almost everyone else in the public system?

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