Paul Coghlan (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House and wish him well in his role. Any Minister or Minister of State whose portfolio includes FÁS is in a difficult berth. I look forward to hearing his response to the debate — I heard his opening statement.

I welcome many of the wonderful initiatives which FÁS introduced and I pay due credit to it for everything it has done with regard to community employment schemes. Over the years I have championed them in this House. I tabled motions to have them extended and expanded and age limits altered. All of us are at one with regard to this. We have seen wonderful work throughout the country and in our communities.

We are concerned about the bigger picture in FÁS and, as a number of Senators stated, for a period of time calls were made in this House for a debate on FÁS. The Minister of State will agree that the board of FÁS has serious questions to answer. Under law and corporate governance procedures it is answerable. It is where the buck stops. I look forward to hearing the views of the Minister of State on this without rehashing everything stated already about the board. It is a serious matter to have two Garda fraud squad investigations under way in a State agency of its former standing and with the workload it is expected to carry. This was already touched on by numerous speakers and I will not go into it.

It is never satisfactory to have a cosy relationship as exists between FÁS and its auditors or accountants — another speaker referred to that point. This firm of accountants and business consultants has done a considerable amount of work for FÁS, mostly with regard to corporate affairs, over a number of years. OSK was consistently successful, as we now know, in applying for work at FÁS, and the corporate affairs section mainly dealt with a single contact within OSK. This is something that should not be allowed within any agency. I am not aware of the competitive tendering arrangements in place at FÁS for that type of work, but it is something that should come up for review as a matter of course, preferably on a biannual basis. As I said in this House before, it is outrageous that in answering to the most senior public watchdog for the expenditure of taxpayers' funds throughout Departments and agencies, members of FÁS management had the audacity to provide documentation with large chunks blacked out. Who the blazes do they think they are? It is an absolute scandal.

I await the Minister of State's response on the question of there being no comprehensive explanation for the expenditure of FÁS's budget of more than €1 billion. Senator Ross and others expressed serious concern in this regard. There have been numerous examples of financial waste within FÁS for which we still have no satisfactory explanation. The advertising contract of €100,000 given to a local publication when all other advertising was national is one such unexplained item of expenditure.

Alarm bells should have rung in 2003 when a reputable individual, Mr. Anthony Spollen, conducted an inquiry into FÁS's construction skills and safe pass schemes. He identified 30 serious problems in the agency's training and assessment procedures for the construction sector. We now know this was merely the tip of the iceberg. What was done after this report was received and presumably examined? It is incredible to consider that it might have been brushed aside. I look forward to the Minister of State's explanation in this regard.

The members of the board of FÁS have questions to answer in the first instance. They must accept their accountability in these matters. Ultimately, the buck stops with them. The Minister has a duty of oversight, to be fulfilled on a regular basis, but it is the board which has questions to answer in the first instance on what actions it will take to address this situation. After that, it is for the Minister to take action if it fails to do so. I contend that the position of the board is untenable. I look forward to the Minister of State's response.