Fate couldn't have choreographed the events of the past week more carefully had there been a malign conspiracy abroad to inflict maximum damage to both the government and senior public servants – with the by-product of heating the country for nothing on the hot air of indignation emanating from Liveline.

As the government prepared to launch its budget centrepiece, the aptly nicknamed An Bord Snip Nua, which aims to reform the public sector by cutting waste and increasing efficiency, the first revelations of fat cat lifestyles and largesse at Fás hit the headlines. A stick with which to beat the public sector perhaps? A boot to kick 360,000 workers on an unsustainable wage bill of €20bn up the transom? Even senior trade unionists such as David Begg agreed mistakes had been made at Fás.

By last Wednesday, when Brian Cowen and Brian Lenihan launched their Transforming Public Services programme, Fás chief executive Rody Molloy had resigned – though with none of the personal accountability for messing up that the Taoiseach was pledging would be the fate of other under-performing public servants. The man who flew business class with his wife to the US and who, we later discovered, feasted with his wife, Mary Harney and her husband Brian Geoghegan at a $994 dinner, gets a €300,000-plus payoff and retains full public sector-enhanced pension. (A contrast to the treatment of those students with disabilities who are currently on Fás-funded courses. Instructors were informed last week that any student who missed a day, whether with or without a doctor's certificate, was to be docked 80 cent from their €4-a-week meal allowance – no doubt to ensure value for money for the taxpayer. But this is, of course, a cheap point and not relevant to the central argument).

Central to the argument is public sector reform. Everything Cowen wrote and said about the need for reform of the public service is correct. It does need to put the public first. It does need to be more flexible and transparent and there should be reward for good performance and penalties for those who mess up.

But his reaction to the Fás scandal went beyond loyalty to Rody Molloy and to the heart of a system that we now see sustains itself in a lifestyle that the taxpayer can only look at with shock.

Politicians are complicit at the highest level with the abuse at Fás and are themselves in need of as much reform as they expect of the public service.

At the latest tally, six government ministers – four seniors and two juniors, Paddy Duffy, the then Taoiseach's best friend, as well as the President have all travelled to the US to support the Fás Science Challenge project. Now this is probably a very good internship and the couple of months spent at Nasa or other leading US institutions were probably highly beneficial. But the programme did not need the sort of political support it got as ministers and ministers of state almost queued to cross the Atlantic.

Our ministers are among the best paid in the world. Their expenses are unvouched for. Their cars and travel are provided for. They have unlimited use of chauffeur-driven vehicles which they have no hesitation in using both at work and off duty. It is a lifestyle of indulgence which has affected their value system.

The depressing aspect for the taxpayer is that nobody in this sorry saga thought anything wrong of it because they were all so immersed in state-sponsored excess.

The board members of Fás are equally culpable. The expenses of the chief executive who, incidentally, was not entitled to first-class air travel under Department of Finance regulations, should have prompted concern. But then the board was used to a hedonistic lifestyle. Under the chairmanship of union leader Peter McLoone they wined, dined and stayed at some of the country's best hotels to the tune of €175,114 in 15 board meetings over three years.

The Fás scandal is just a small glimpse of the warped and distorted values of our political elite. There can be no doubt that there are plenty of other state boards and bodies with generous expense accounts, though hopefully none beats Fás for excess. But just as Charvet shirts paid for by the taxpayer were the end for Charles Haughey, the Fás Science Challenge project may prove just as damaging a rocket for this government.

The public is in no mood for lectures on accountability – however merited – from a government whose members were prepared to piggy-back on student training as an excuse for another ride on the gravy train. And that's the great pity.