Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Okay. I think Mr. McKeon takes the point that these things are suspected fraud until such time as they are proven.

I refer to page 234 of the report. Mr. McKeon does not need to go into it in detail. There are 131,000 people out of 191,000 people who owe some money, and 36,000 owe less than €100. Will the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform agree to some common sense and not waste everybody's time? Somebody might have over-claimed one day four years ago. If the amounts are under €100, why are we wasting valuable resources dealing with the issue?

There are 69,000 people who owe amounts between €100 and €500. That is probably due to a week between changing jobs or something like that, but they are listed under a heading. Another 27,000 people owe amounts under €1,000. I am not suggesting the Department go soft on that. Perhaps I should not use the term "trivial", but I could not understand how we spent money, time and resources on dealing with these types of issues. I bet if I asked for the ages of some of those cases, I would be told some were over ten years old. We are the Committee of Public Accounts and we do not like writing off taxpayers' money, but when we get figures we want them to have practical meaning. I do not think counting some of the cases as debts which are collectable is correct. I ask the Department to take that on board. I know the witnesses will probably say they are coming to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform with further proposals on that during the course of the year. I hope common sense will prevail.

I tabled a parliamentary question on a matter with which Mr. McKeon might be familiar. On 18 October, I asked for the details of the social insurance fund by scheme. I was told there were 30,731 cases relating to jobseeker's benefit, the outstanding debt was €23 million and the average debt was €754. Obviously, some of that relates to people who claimed an extra day or two here and there or whatever. That figure seems quite low.

Mr. McKeon probably has the response to the parliamentary question because I am sure he cleared it. I do not understand why the highest average debt per scheme is deserted wives' benefit, at €18,000 according to the reply. In the case of the contributory guardian payment the average debt is €9,000.

Will Mr. McKeon comment on the average debt figure under the death benefit scheme, which seems to be very high? I am not familiar with it but I understand there are only a small number of cases under the scheme.