John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That never stopped anyone in here.

Regarding rent supplement and fraud, I will refer to the different schemes and payments. Every now and then there is a news story about the Department tackling fraud and saving hundreds of millions of euro. I believe that gives people an impression that there is a massive amount of fraud taking place but, to be clear, when we compare some of our schemes to the fraud levels in the United Kingdom rent supplement schemes it seems they are higher, not by much but they are higher. Those are the figures I have seen. How does Ms O'Donoghue respond generally to the notion that there is rampant fraud in the social welfare system? She knows the corresponding figures for different jurisdictions. Is it a fair statement to say there is rampant fraud in the social welfare schemes? There will always be a certain percentage of it but is the fraud in some schemes worse than others?