John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

In regard to the point made by Deputy Gino Kenny, one will have an opportunity to debate it when the legislation comes to this committee because it requires legislation.

Time is running but I wish to raise the following point. The Minister talked about control and anti-fraud activity, saving €500 million and the methodology used. The latter is not transparent. I know how the sum of €506 million has been calculated. The Minister has said that €172 million comes from jobseekers' payment. In 2016, his Department conducted 246,741 investigations or reviews. The answers to the following questions are not transparent to the committee. What percentage of those were found to have a liability to make up the sum of €172 million? What percentage of the total jobseekers were involved in the first place? What was the targeting process? We do not have time to go through these matters now. The same questions about the methodology of calculating the €506 million apply to all of the other schemes, whether it is the carer's allowance or otherwise. How did the Department select the investigations or reviews? What percentage of the total were they? What percentage of the reviews had an income?

With the permission of the Minister and his officials, I would like the financial scrutiny team from the Oireachtas, which has worked in preparing some of this, to work with the officials to bring some transparency to this and produce a document for the benefit of members. The Minister builds in the figure into the Estimates on an annual basis. We need some understanding of it but we do not have time today to adequately address this matter in full detail. Are the Minister's officials prepared to work with the committee secretariat's financial scrutiny team on this matter?