Published: Wednesday, 14th July, 2010 5:00pm

'Money all repaid' local firm says of FÁS over-payment

The managing director of a Mullingar based company identified in an internal FÁS audit as having claimed full training fees from FÁS for people whom it had not actually trained has spoken of her "deep regret" at the incident.

The Dail's Public Accounts Committee heard on Thursday that Foras Training had to repay €7,400 to FÁS after irregularities had been uncovered in an internal audit by the state training agency. The information came to light during an examination by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) into the FÁS-run "Competency Development Programme", (CDP), which was delivered for FÁS by private trainers.

Lisa O'Connell, managing director of Forus (previously Foras) which operates in Mullingar, Athlone and Naas said the company had erred:

"During the five years (2003 to 2008) in question Foras trained in excess of 3000 CDP students. Unfortunately, the company experienced a slip-up in its attendance controls, which resulted in a claim being made for 14 students who booked on a course but did attend, or who failed to complete the course," said Ms. O'Connell - who made an appearance last year on the tv show "Dragon's Den".

She stated that this resulted in Forus Training repaying €7,400 to FAS in 2009.

"As Managing Director of Forus, I deeply regret this incident, and strict controls are now in-place since this was brought to light," said Ms. O'Connell.

"We are still trading, employ people locally, and have many current students, some who are being funded by FAS, we have been re-instated on the FAS register," she said.

"It was a small amount of money but we took it very seriously and the full amount has been repaid," explained Lisa.

Other concerns raised in the audit related to trainers used by Ms. O'Connell's firm.

"Foras have always used qualified trainers, during that period, trainers were mainly under contract to Foras," she told the Westmeath Examiner this week.

"Consequently some of them were FÁS registered in their own names or registered with FÁS through Foras for courses which had slightly different titles or more advanced programmes. For example 'Introduction to Computers' versus 'Computing for Beginners' with both courses having a similar content. "'Properly registered' in the strict interpretation of the FÁS auditor meant that the trainer had to be registered through Foras and the course title had to match exactly," Ms. O'connell continued.

"Foras Training had not realised that stipulation had to be adhered to in that way. Now all current trainers are registered for the courses they are currently training," she stated.

The audit also queried Foras's practice of printing its own certificates for graduating students for use at job interviews.

Miss O'Connell said this that this wasn't an accurate description of the practice at the Foras.

"Delays in receiving certificates from the awarding body, can sometimes occur. On rare occasions, when a student had successfully completed a course, and needed such confirmation for an employment interview, Foras would issue a pro-tem certificate, with a covering letter confirming attendance and successful completion. On receipt of the certificate from the awarding body, it was forwarded to the student," Ms O'Connell said.

"It suggested that we were printing our own certs. The simple explanation was that we provided perhaps an A4 page with our logo and the course details with a cover letter explaining that the person had attended the course, earned his qualification and was awaiting their certificate.

"This was provided for people going to interview on a number of occasions," she stated.

FÁS is reputed to have paid €1.3m to the training firm and FÁS assistant director general Martin Lynch said the company had been suspended from the training register for a period as a result.

The funding came from the FÁS CDP, which paid out €167m to employers between 2003 and 2009 to upskill staff.

FÁS did not record how many of the 123,000 workers trained in the programme actually gained a certificate.

According to FÁS's website, the CDP has now been shut down and FÁS is focusing its resources on retraining the growing numbers of unemployed people.