Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

On a general legal point, I have been advised that designing tenders to favour one potential bidder may be legally suspect, as anyone who has been involved in contracts will be aware.

To address a point raised by Deputies Joan Collins, Brendan Ryan and Ray Butler, the standards specified in the contract require that the outlets where the services are to be delivered are available for 95% of clients within 3 km in an urban area and 95% of clients within 15 km in a rural area. As such, the contract will include the specification the Deputies suggested. To tender for the contract, the bidder must have the potential to have a wide and relatively dense coverage of points at which the services may be provided. While An Post is in a position to meet this specification, many other potential tenderers will not be able to meet this requirement.

The import of Deputy Ó Snodaigh's comments is that clients of the Department should be forced to visit a post office in person to collect social welfare payments. Clients of the Department have been offered a choice of payment for some time. Many people who retire and have been in employment - this relates to an issue discussed earlier - are likely to have a bank account. Such persons are likely to indicate a preference for having a retirement pension or other payment made to a specified bank account. It would be interesting to ascertain how many of the Deputies present collect child benefit in person at their local post office. The general evidence shows that when people apply for child benefit, applicants with a bank account tend to opt to use that option.

This is another area An Post has sought to develop by expanding and developing the range of banking type services it provides. I hope the company will address this issue developmentally because there is no doubt, as Deputy Joan Collins noted, that significant numbers of people are not comfortable with electronic banking and are comfortable collecting cash payments. The Department recognises this and hence the emphasis on the widespread availability of a cash payment service.

For at least two decades, people on retirement pensions or in receipt of child benefit have been able to nominate a bank account for payment and those who have bank accounts tend to avail of this option. The collection of a payment in person is applicable primarily to jobseekers. As the Minister with responsibility for addressing fraud, I am anxious that this continue because an issue arises in respect of proof of identity. In a number of cases people have been found to have had other people collect payments on their behalf. The Department has introduced controls in airports and so forth to detect people residing outside the jurisdiction who are visiting the country to collect payments to which they were no longer properly entitled. We stop such payments and, where appropriate, prosecute the individuals in question. I introduced the legislation necessary to carry out this function because all taxpayers, whether in work or otherwise, contribute taxes and PRSI to pay for a good, solid social welfare system. They demand and are entitled to a high level of reassurance that the Department will seek, when making payments of almost €20 billion per annum, to keep fraud and error to a minimum.

On the latter point, the most recent figures, which are for 2012, show that €97 million was recovered. The overall level of error is approximately 8% and 42% of this is accounted for by suspected fraud. Third party error by the customer, that is, where he or she makes a misstatement or error, accounts for a further 37% and departmental errors account for approximately 8%. Cases involving it transpired that people had been left a significant estate and were collecting payments to which they were not entitled accounted for the remaining 13%. Recoveries in these areas continue to be significant and amounted to approximately €97 million in 2012.

I am aware that Deputy O'Dea was a legal practitioner. He will be aware, therefore, that in 2007, the contract held by An Post was challenged. This challenge was not a figment of someone's imagination and further challenges could be taken. Given that the Deputy was a member of the Government at that time perhaps he will indicate, subject to Cabinet confidentiality requirements, whether that issue and what could be done to secure An Post's future position were discussed. There were no indications of this when I arrived in the Department. However, the contract was challenged in 2007. While I understand the motives of the Deputies, the position of the contract in law must be resilient.

Critical to the contract is the spread of services but also the provision of vital services now included in law that strengthen the position of the service provider, An Post, in the role of detecting fraud and errors and probably, more importantly, deterring fraud and errors. People will know that when they go to the local post office, there will be an eagle eye and that if somebody's first cousin or somebody else shows up, that person will be questioned to have their identity and entitlement to the payment checked. I can understand the reason the Deputy's constituent was upset when they were challenged to have their identity checked.