Michael O’Farrell
Investigations Editor
UNEMPLOYED people on taxpayer-funded work placement schemes have been paid to stay home, go on holiday or take breaks when they are meant to be working, an Irish Mail on Sunday investigation can reveal.
Internal audit reports show a shocking catalogue of financial mismanagement at schemes set up originally by FÁS. As a result, some staff who were supposed to be working a 39-hour week were: Paid to stay at home when managers decided to keep community groups and centres closed.
* Paid for breaks they shouldn’t have been paid for over a timespan of several years before auditors noticed.
* Allowed to work from home without supervision.
* Marked down as being present at work while in fact they were away on holiday. * Permitted to take additional leave days without having to work days in lieu to make up for it.
The audits seen by the MoS relate to the Community Services Programme – still known to most people as FÁS schemes – which pays for 2,800 unemployed and disadvantaged people to work in 398 community groups and companies around the country.
Funded by the Department of Social Protection, the CSP employment support grants amount to €42m annually and are managed and audited by Pobal, a not-forprofit body that oversees programmes for the Government and the EU.
A sample of Pobal’s audits of the CSP scheme beneficiaries – obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the MoS – detail a litany of concerning financial issues and the widespread abuse of grant rules across the country.
It is estimated that the scale of the issue of inappropriate payments to workers on job schemes could easily run to millions. This is compounded by the fact that many groups nationwide that are receiving CSP funding are also in receipt of Community Employment Scheme funding.
The CE Scheme – which costs more than €300m annually and supports more than 23,000 employees – is at risk of the same financial mismanagement issues as the CSP scheme.
However, the Department of Social Protection – now under the control of Leo Varadkar – does not compile a list of groups required to pay back grants spent inappropriately.
However, Pobal warned all supported groups about staff being paid inappropriately in October 2010.
Despite that written warning, problems related to attendance and payroll resulting in inappropriate payments to supported employees were identified as an ongoing concern in more than half of the 57 CSP audits carried out in 2013.
As a result, the issue was flagged by Pobal as one of a number of common audit issues that required special attention.
Yet a sample of 14 audits carried out in 2014, obtained by the MoS, reveal a litany of continuing and serious irregularities.
Inspectors from Pobal’s audit unit often encountered poorly completed attendance records and time sheets that made it impossible to establish when staff were actually at work.
In one case attendance records had been systematically altered with an entire year’s worth of entries blotted out with correction fluid.
In other cases records had been lost and even, in one case, destroyed as a result of a break-in which the Pobal auditors were unable to verify.
Auditors also discovered many instances in which there was no documentary evidence on file to confirm that the CSP funded employees fulfilled eligibility requirements for the scheme.
Under these requirements 70% of employees supported by CSP funding must be unemployed or disadvantaged.
Other issues identified included a large number of pre-signed blank cheques at one group, a CSP-funded employee being related to board members at another group and repeated instances of inadequate financial controls in numerous centres.
The boards of the groups in receipt of CSP funding consist of prominent volunteer members of local communities. Among them are priests, gardaí, teachers and farmer. However, in one case a board member was a convicted armed robber and one-time member of the IRA.
Direct managers, who are not supposed to be board members, are employed to manage the groups and their CSP employees. The sample audits reviewed by the MoS relate to groups ranging in size from a handful of employees to more than a hundred. All of them had to repay Pobal at least €3,000 for hours not worked by CSP employees.
These groups have repaid, or are in the process of repaying, more than €130,000 paid out to workers who were absent, on holiday, on breaks or otherwise not doing their duties.
In most cases, the workers who were inappropriately paid did not have to repay the money themselves or work it back in lieu.
Pobal said this week it could not provide a overall figure for the potential scale of the issue over the years when all funded groups are included.
Several of the groups in the CSP audit sample examined by the MoS were also in receipt of CE Scheme funding. A Department of Social Protection audit of one of these groups showed that it had to pay money back to the department due to the same issues that Pobal identified.
However the department is unaware of the scale of the issue. After submitting a Freedom of Information request for copies of audits that resulted in CE funds being paid back to the department in 2014 and 2015, the MoS was informed that the request would involve allocating 73 staff members to the task for 172 hours at a cost of several thousand euro.
Pobal said in a statement it had provided ‘further training supports and guidance to CSP companies to make the reporting procedure more streamlined’.
‘In cases where any other irregularities are detected such as deficiencies in record keeping or insufficient detail on time sheets, Pobal may arrange follow-up inspections and obtain an undertaking from the company’s board that such issues will be addressed.’ A Department of Social Protection spokesman said officers carried out monitoring visits to all CE schemes each year.
