Plugin link missing

Greetings,
We sat down tonight to work on a WordPress blog that was customized by someone else. We are baffled to discover that there is no “Plugins” link or “Settings” link in the dashboard in the light blue bar at the top. The only link that’s there is the “Profile” link.

We’ve never run into this before, and cannot find another thread here on the forum addressing this. We are especially keen on getting the plugins link to appear, as there are plugins we need to add to the blog. Can anyone help us figure out why these links would be missing from the dashboard? Thank you.