Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the committee for the invitation to appear before it to discuss the 2014 Revised Estimates for my Department. My officials have provided detailed briefing material for the use of the committee at this meeting. This builds on the changed format introduced last year and is designed to better reflect the new performance-budgeting approach to the Estimates process.
Understandably, there has been huge concern about high levels of unemployment and the associated costs in recent years. However, leaving aside the financial challenges posed by unemployment, the scale and scope of the Department's other expenditure, including its critical role in the social and economic life of the country, is not always fully appreciated in public discourse. As a starting point today, it is useful to examine the Department's expenditure on its various programmes in 2014. These are outlined in table 1 of page 3 of the briefing.
The biggest single block of expenditure in 2014 will be on pensions, amounting to €6.5 billion or just over 33% of overall expenditure. Expenditure on workingage income supports,including jobseeker's and one-parent family payments, accounts for some 25% of overall expenditure or €4.9 billion. Expenditure on working age employment supports,including Tús, community employment and various employment supports, accounts for more than €1.07 billion or 5.5% of overall expenditure. Expenditure provision for illness, disability andcarers accounts for more than €3.3 billion or almost 17% of expenditure in 2014. In total, payments to carers will amount to almost €806 million, which is a significant increase. Expenditure on children and familiesaccounts for nearly 12% of expenditure or just over €2.3 billion. Some €281 million will be spent on family income supplement, which is provided to people on low wages, with children. This is an increase of some €52 million on the allocation for 2013. Expenditure on supplementary payments, agencies and miscellaneous servicesaccounts for €926 million or 4.7% of overall expenditure. The principal items in this category include rent and mortgage interest supplement, the household benefit package, free travel and the fuel allowance.
On claims processing, members may recall that at last year's meeting regarding consideration of the Estimates concern was expressed about delays in processing payments, particularly in relation to certain schemes. These backlogs must be seen in the context of the huge additional administrative impact of the recession, with which the Department has had to deal in the past five years. In this regard, it is worth noting that the live register rose by 127,000 in the first six months of 2009, an unprecedented level of increase, and by 253,000 over the three-year period from end-2007 to end-2010. Dealing with numbers of this magnitude - made up mostly of persons who had not previously been in receipt of unemployment benefits or had ever seen the inside of a social welfare office - has been a significant ongoing administrative challenge. To address the backlogs in relation to certain schemes, we set a target last year for significantly reducing delays in respect of four schemes in particular, namely, carer's allowance, invalidity pension, disability allowance and family income supplement. I am pleased to say that the backlogs have in the main been significantly reduced. Table 15 of the briefing shows that the number of pending claims at the end of 2013 had reduced year-on-year by 68% in the case of carer's allowance, with a much bigger spend and numbers as a consequence; 45% in the case of invalidity pension and 35% in the case of disability allowance.

Furthermore, the family income supplement, FIS, scheme is now totally up to date and delivering a fast and efficient service to families on low incomes with children and working parents. Table 18 shows that first-time FIS claims pending at year-end are down by 72% year-on-year, while renewals pending are down by 86%. All first-time claims and renewals are now processed promptly on receipt. That is conditional on people giving the information required, as Deputies will appreciate. Major progress has also been made in other areas, and the clearance of backlogs, as well as prompt processing in all areas, will continue to be a key priority in the Department.
It is essential that we maintain public confidence in the welfare system by vigorously tackling any fraudulent activity. The vast majority of people on social welfare are claiming only the correct entitlement due to them. However, a small minority are not and a range of measures are employed by the Department to ensure that social welfare fraud and abuse is minimised and that control activity is appropriately focused. In this regard, fraud detection and control systems have been refined and enhanced in recent years and are subject to continuing review. Overall, this is resulting in less opportunity to commit fraud and less chance of claims being in payment at an incorrect rate through fraud or error. Approximately 1.1 million reviews were carried out in both 2012 and 2013, and the savings achieved in 2013 were €632 millionor approximately 5% less than those achieved in 2012. This is the prevention of expenditure that would have taken place if the control and checking had not been done. This outcome is not unexpected given the decline in the live register, with people going back to work, and it demonstrates that the Department's more intense control focus in recent years is having a positive preventative impact on the level of fraud and error in the social welfare system.
Factors which have contributed to preventing and reducing levels of fraud and error have included the following examples. One-parent family claims are now dealt with in local offices and all customers are reviewed annually to verify their ongoing entitlement - to ensure the relationship status has not changed or that a person has not gone back to work, for example. Systems and data exchanges between the Department and other State bodies are being enhanced on an ongoing basis, and the Department is now acting on information received through these links in a more timely manner. Commencement of employment information from the Revenue Commissioners is now received weekly and acted upon automatically. Prisoner data is now exchanged weekly, and if somebody is sentenced and sent to jail, the data is passed to us.The integration of the General Register Office into the Department has resulted in the timely notification of births, deaths and marriages to the payment systems. If people have a baby, the processing of their child benefit claim is really fast nowadays. Looking ahead, the control savings target for 2014 will be finalised shortly in the context of a new fraud initiative covering the period 2014 to 2018. The latter is currently in preparation and is expected to be launched in April 2014.
I will now turn to the ongoing roll-out of the public services card, PSC. This has been introduced to enable people gain access to public services more efficiently and with a minimum of duplication of effort, while at the same time preserving people's privacy to the maximum extent possible. The card is designed to replace other cards within the public sector, such as the free travel pass and the social services card of this Department. It will make it easy for providers of public services to verify the identity of customers and cut down on multiple claiming. One of the other key benefits relates to the robustness of the identity registration process in order to minimise abuse. The registration process includes facial image matching in order to prevent a person using more than one identity, which is a key deterrent with regard to potential abuse. It is already proving successful, with a number of cases detected in which individuals were using various identities to make multiple claims in different offices.
The card is a key initiative in the new public service reform plan. Discussions on the expansion of the public service card to other public service customer bases are being advanced. The roll-out to pensioners has already commenced, and in February an additional postal registration process is being introduced and will be offered to an additional 200,000 people over 66 years of age who are in receipt of a Department pension and paid at a post office in 2014. The process will involve a minimum of inconvenience to the customer. Approximately 515,000 cards have been produced and are in use, and it is intended to issue cards to 3 million of the adult population by the end of 2016.
Turning back to unemployment, tackling this problem remains the Government's number one priority for the foreseeable future, but we are moving decisively in the right direction. Last October, the live register fell below 400,000 for the first time since December 2008, and there was further improvement in November and December. In live register terms, we are back to the rate from 2007 and 2008, which is great news for the people who are going back to work. This will also significantly reduce the pressure on social welfare expenditure. The standardised unemployment rate is now 12.4%, very close to the European average. Although it is still much too high, this rate is still remarkable, as at the height of the unemployment crisis it was as high as 15%. The positive trend in the reduction in the number of people on the live register is to be welcomed.
Recent CSO data showed that more than a thousand people a week are returning to work, which is proof that the measures taken by the Government to stabilise the economy and address the unemployment crisis we inherited are paying off. There is still no room for any sense of complacency, as unemployment is still at a very high level. In particular, the number of people who are long-term unemployed is a significant cause for concern, as past experience suggests that people who are long-term unemployed face the greatest challenges in securing employment, even during periods of economic recovery. New entrants to the labour force may well be selected by employers, for example, in preference to the long-term unemployed, so the role of employers in helping people back to work and assisting the Department with the various schemes we operate is critical. This is where the Pathways to Work strategy overseen by the Department will continue to play a crucial role. Through Pathways to Work I am confident that we will build on the progress made to date and ensure the number of people, including young people, taking up or returning to work continues to increase. Key to the success of Pathways to Work is the continuing roll-out of the new integrated employment and support service, Intreo. There are now 43 offices up and running, with a further 17 to come before the end of this year. The Intreo one-stop shops facilitate jobseekers in accessing income and employment supports in one place for the first time. Intreo also offers a range of supports to employers who are seeking to find new staff, such as the wage subsidy scheme JobsPlus. I appeal to all members when they are meeting employers to remind them of the Intreo service, which is a public employment service free at the point of use and access, as we want them to take it up. It includes valuable schemes such as JobsPIus and can convey the calibre of candidates on the live register.
I have touched on just some of the key developments in 2013 and priorities for the year ahead. I look forward to our discussion in that regard. I thank the staff from the Department, who have worked to clear all the backlogs in a time of unprecedented demand. We have also managed to transform many of our information technology services, and the staff have been enormously co-operative in achieving that goal while serving the people who use the Department of Social Protection.