Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

There is a minimum number of review targets for 2013. More savings are expected because we have better analytical tools. I gave an example of the man with the three photos. That is really helpful. If the inspectors talk to that individual, we get much more information because they ask why they are being picked on when other people are doing it. There is often a substantially increased flow of information from such cases.

We have taken advice from the Comptroller and Auditor General on auditing, and we now carry out full-size randomised surveys of the different social welfare expenditure headings. We carry out a generalised survey of 1,000 jobseeker's allowances. Based on that, we can see the failure rate or the control rate of fraud and abuse. If we then target the people who are deemed to be at risk of abusing the system, by using analytics we can double the analysis of cases where the risk is quite high. We also carry out matching exercises, which are now part of the analytics. For instance, we do work with the Commission for Taxi Regulation and with a series of different statistics. We now get the PPS number of everybody sentenced to a term of imprisonment. The prison services now supply us with that information on a weekly basis. Before I came into office, that data was supplied every six months to a year. There is no reason that should not be provided weekly, as is the case now.

As we improve our IT systems, our capacity to target, to increase the number of reviews and to carry out proper random surveys of 1,000 people receiving a particular benefit will broadly tell us where the problems exist. If we identify a new issue, we may then extend what we have learned to a nationwide trawl of people who may have the same profile as that thrown up by surveys. That is how it is done. The general public provided us with 28,000 tip-off phone calls last year. Due to the pressure on social welfare, the general public are very anxious to see abuses of the system investigated, and we now do a great deal of that from Carrick-on-Shannon, which is very helpful.