Mr. John McKeon:

We match the general registration office; I referred to the registration of marriages. We match the deaths register as well. We match and take note and automatically stop payment at the appropriate time when a death is registered. Most of the difficulty on the non-contributory pension scheme relates to two categories - means and when means change, and savings are part of the means. The savings ratio among pensions is very high. As they accumulate savings, according to the law they lose entitlement to some payments because their savings are assessed. Many pensioners neglect to tell us that. Many pensioners have earnings that they do not tell us about. In fact what happens is not so much that people are claiming for deceased members of the family, it is that when a person dies and we get details of their estate we find that while they were alive they had savings or means that they had not disclosed and it is a recovery from the estate of the deceased rather than a recovery from a person who is claiming. There are cases of impersonation on pensions and they tend to be slightly higher but that is generally in respect of people who are not living in the country. A family member claiming in respect of a person who has emigrated could be claiming in their name with their PPSN. There have been a number of notable examples that we have prosecuted through the courts. Regrettably many of our higher value cases are older people who are defrauding the pension system. I would be very careful about extrapolating from the figures. In my opening statement I stated that this was a very low number. We should not take a cause célèbreor an exception and assume they are the rule. In fact the exceptions prove the rule that most people are honest and open. We have to be careful not to tar everybody on the welfare system with the sins of a few.