Fás staff cannot be that blind!The recently appointed director general of Fás, Paul O’Toole is quoted in the Irish Times today as saying that staff at Fás were “bruised” and “disappointed” by the continuing revelations about excessive spending at the agency. Now that sounds like a load of nonsense to me (you’ll note I’m being polite here!). The implication of the article (and we’ll allow for the fact that Mr O’Toole’s words may have been taken somewhat out of context) is that staff are shocked at the revelations about the behaviour of their managers. That is simply not possible. People working in organisations are not stupid. They see what is going on and they very quickly become aware of the culture of an organisation. Staff in Fás could plainly see that there was a free spending, let’s go as far as saying entitlement culture in the place. The staff who worked on that expensive advertisement that never got shown knew money was being wasted. The staff who saw overly luxurious accommodation and flights being taken knew about it. It is simply not believable anymore that this lax behaviour was confined to only small parts of the organisation. If staff are bruised and disappointed it’s more likely to be as a result of the backlash of public opinion that they must be suffering now. Is it that it had been going on so long that they simply didn’t see it as bad behaviour anymore? Is it that the lack of whistleblower protection law here made it too difficult for anyone to reveal the scale of mismanagement? Could no-one appreciate that they were playing with public money? The warning signs regarding Fás have been in the public arena for well over three years. Why did it take so long for us to get some sense of the scale of the problem? Where else is it going on? Here’s something that put shivers up the spine. Just over a year ago on 2nd September the then Director General of Fás Rody Molloy was quoted as saying that “his organisation has suffered no losses from fraud or mismanagement”. Well he got that wrong! Add a CommentYour comment will appear once it has been approved. |