Kenny to find out why Fás has again failed to produce accounts on time

TAOISEACH ENDA Kenny is to establish why State training agency Fás has failed to produce its annual accounts on time for the second year running.

Independent TD Shane Ross told the Dáil that if this happened in public companies “they would be struck off after four months”.

The Dublin South TD also asked what Fás was actually doing when 440,000 were unemployed yet multinational companies could not fill 2,000 job vacancies in science, maths and technology.

Raising the issue during Leaders’ Questions, he said “apparently Fás can act with impunity. It does not produce its accounts on time and there is no prospect of it doing so.” Condemning what he called the “€1 billion per annum bloated quango”, he asked: “Is it still in the same sort of chaos that it was before?”

Mr Kenny acknowledged the skills shortage, and said an “adjustment” was required in the “curriculum dealing with mathematics, engineering, physics and so on. That is not something which can happen overnight, but it is something of which the Minister is fully cognisant.”

He said the controversial State training agency “is being reformed” and the Government would decide on it “if not next week, then the week after”.

He told Mr Ross that “I will ask the Minister for Education and Skills to provide the answer as to why Fás has not been in a position to produce its end-of-year report by June”.

He added: “The Minister and Minister of State Ciarán Cannon met the chief executive and the board of Fás on this issue.”

The Taoiseach also said the chief executive and senior personnel would be called in before an appropriate Oireachtas committee to discuss “the projections and proposals on the revamped and reformed structure” of Fás.

Mr Ross asked if there was “any penalty or stricture or can anything be done when these quangos, these semi-State or State agencies, decide to ride roughshod over these rules and say they will not or cannot produce accounts on time”.

What could be done, he asked, “to enforce this rule”?

He said Fás did not produce its 2009 accounts until November last year. “Now it does not give a hoot and it is again not producing them. You would have to ask the question whether it is up to its old tricks or whether it is just being negligent?”

The Taoiseach agreed to establish the reason for the delay.

Referring to reform of Fás, he added that “flexibility and adaptability are required to give our young people the opportunity to measure up to the challenge from wherever it comes”.