"HEADS will have to roll," Senator Shane Ross demanded today after further details emerged of "extravagant and outrageous" spending at FAS.

Pressure grew this evening on the authority’s chief, Rody Molloy, after more details of first-class flights for wives and executives to the US and Far East, golf trips to Florida and even beauty salon treatments emerged.

Pay-per-view movies at hotels were also charged to the taxpayer. Public fury at the expenses has been steadily growing following Mr Molloy’s attempted explanations for the luxury travel on radio.

Taoiseach Brian Cowen has also allowed himself to be dragged into the scandal after he gave unequivocal support to Mr Molloy, a personal friend.

Mr Cowen made the comments despite details emerging of lavish spending among Mr Molloy and other principals in the company.

Senator Shane Ross told the Herald that there should be “a massive cull” at the embattled Government agency after “madly extravagant” spending of €5.7m of public money in one year alone.

“I think that there is going to have to be a massive cull in FAS,” Senator Ross said today.

Embattled FAS chief Rody Molloy is due to be quizzed by the Dail Public Accounts committee on Thursday.

However, Taoiseach Brian Cowen has expressed his full confidence in the man he described as “an excellent public servant”.

In June, Mr Cowen also defended Mr Molloy, who is from Birr, Co Offaly, in the Dail saying that he was “a person whom I personally hold in the highest regard”.

It has also emerged that the Public Accounts committee has yet to get full details of how FAS spent a massive €5.7m on travel and other expenses in 2007.

This is the equivalent of more than €2,500 on travel and subsistence claims for each of its 2,200 staff.

Figures released over the weekend under the Freedom of Information Act show €642,000 was claimed on expenses for travel to the US over the past four years.

This included first-class flights for senior executives and their wives, expensive rounds of golf, pay-per-view films in hotel rooms and a bill for a beauty and nail salon. PAC chairman Bernard Allen (FG) said that a precise breakdown of the €5.7m overall travel and subsistence claim last year has not been disclosed.

“They have given us subheads of the expenditure but not the full information,” he said.

The Dail committee got copies of the FAS internal reports two weeks ago but he said “large sections were blacked out”.

FAS is claiming legal advice indicated they did not have to disclose certain information to the PAC which is carrying out an investigation following claims of financial irregularities in how the agency spends its annual €1bn budget.

Opposition politicians were infuriated by Mr Molloy’s claims that he was “entitled to travel first class” and that he was playing golf in Florida to “develop relationships” with officials from US space agency, NASA. Fine Gael enterprise spokesman Leo Varadkar called for the resignation of Mr Molloy saying his position was now untenable.

Mr Varadkar said the €643,000 spent on transatlantic travel over the past four years was “an outrageous waste of taxpayers money” at a time when FAS should be focusing on retraining and upskilling unemployed workers.

As head of FAS, Mr Molloy is in charge of 2,200 employees, and oversees a budget of ¤1bn. He earns an annual salary of €203,000 and received a performance-related bonus of €35,458 last year.

Meanwhile, it also emerged today that Paddy Duffy, the close associate of former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, travelled to the US as a guest of FAS in 2004 and 2006, although he had no official role with the authority.

The cost of Mr Duffy’s trips – one of which was to Atlanta, Georgia, costing €4,562 – was charged to the FAS Science Challenge Project.

The cost of the 2006 flight for Mr Duffy paid for by FAS – this time to Florida – is not known.

- Michael Lavery and Sarah Neville