STATE TRAINING agency Fás has said there was no political or other outside interference in the award of work to a leading public relations firm with links to Fine Gael.
The agency said Fleishman Hillard Saunders (FHS) won the €80,000-a-year contact to provide internal and external communications advice and support during the reorganisation of Fás after scoring the highest marks in a properly conducted tender process.
FHS’s head of consulting, Mark Mortell, is a leading Fine Gael strategist and was involved in coalition negotiations with Labour.
He was on leave from the agency and working for the party at the time it won the Fás tender on March 24th, a day before the general election.
He has said his name was probably used during the pitch process because he knew Paul O’Toole, director general of Fás.
The Fás board decided last November to go to tender for communications support to help the organisation through its impending transformation.
The work was advertised on the tender’s website in early January, and attracted up to 20 expressions of interest. Seven public relations agencies were invited to make presentations to a tender panel that included Mr O’Toole.
Fleishman was notified it had won the contest on February 28th, three days after the election, and the Fás board was notified of the panel’s decision on March 1st.
Mr O’Toole formerly worked for Bord Fáilte, where Mr Mortell was chairman in the 1990s having been appointed to the post by then minister for tourism Enda Kenny.
Fás denied it had signed a contract with the agency but agreed FHS had emerged from the tender process as the preferred supplier. It also claimed Fás was free to contract in services from other companies as required.
A spokesman described the work involved as “bread and butter stuff” rather than high-level strategic consulting.
He said Mr O’Toole would have declared his knowledge of all the main contenders to his fellow panel members before the interviews. “Everything was done by the book.”
A Fleishman spokeswoman said the agency had already started working for Fás. The contract was worth between €50,000 and €80,000 a year, plus VAT, for two years. Mr Mortell would be working on the account but not on a day-to-day basis.
Speaking yesterday in the Dáil, Fianna Fáil communications spokesman Eamon Ó Cuív described the contract as a “controversy”. He called on the Government to bring forward legislation to regulate political lobbyists.
