MARY Coughlan, the tanaiste, is to order a new examination of purchasing and accounting procedures at FAS after a series of disturbing audits at the state training and recruitment agency.

The enterprise and employment minister will appoint “an eminent public figure” this week to review internal audits that uncovered over-spending, breaches of procurement guidelines and other financial irregularities at the agency which spends over €1 billion a year.

Government officials last week invited the former secretary general of a government department to study some of the 80 routine internal audits carried out at FAS in the past seven years — up to 10 of which are believed to have identified inappropriate practices or procedures.

The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment is expected to announce the appointment of the senior figure to carry out the review early this week.

A government source said: “This eminent person will go in, review all the audits and report back before the end of the year. If the report recommends further safeguards ... the tanaiste will move quickly to ensure that happens.”

Coughlan met last week with Rody Molloy, the director general of FAS, and Peter McLoone, the chairman, to discuss her concerns at a fresh sequence of irregularities.

Molloy and other FAS executives will also appear before the Dail public accounts committee next month, where they will be questioned about an audit of the agency’s corporate affairs division which found financial irregularities of at least €1.3m.

That audit, which covered the years from 2002 to 2005, was reviewed by John Purcell, the Comptroller & Auditor General (C&AG) in May. Purcell raised concerns about procurement practices and questioned whether FAS was obtaining value for money in its advertising and other spending. A government source said Coughlan had been assured, after the publication of that report, that tighter procurement and spending procedures had been put in place.

But fresh disclosures since May, covering periods since 2005, prompted the minister to order the review of the agency’s financial controls and procedures.

FAS has defended its current procedures and insisted they have been made more robust in the light of audit findings.

A FAS source said: “We have known this was coming for a few days and we are in favour of it. It is necessary for us to move forward in these challenging economic times, and this process will help put these difficulties behind us.”

Last week details of another internal audit at FAS, completed earlier this year, emerged. It found there was “high non-compliance” with the authority’s quotation and tendering procedures.

The audit of the authority’s procurement unit and accounts payable section sampled orders worth €2.52m out of total of €19.48m to test whether a range of recommendations made in a 2004 report had been implemented. The period covered by the 2008 report was January 2006 to March 2007.

The Sunday Times recently featured details of another audit into community services and training in Dublin South. A leaked e-mail from August 2006 showed concerns were raised about “an absence of recorded financial monitoring” in an area with expenditure of €14m annually and an “apparent disregard for nationally agreed procedures” that had “exposed FAS to substantial risk”.

The e-mail, sent to Molloy, said the internal audit section in FAS was “particularly concerned” by the absence of recorded financial monitoring throughout January to December 2005 and again from January to August 2006. FAS said the issues raised had been dealt with.

Times Recommends

• Henning Mankell: ‘If Wallander was alive, I wouldn’t be a friend of his’
• Secret society's skull and crossbones for sale
• Nigerian leader vanishes after medical treatment