Mr. John McKeon:

It is not that. There are two matters. One is classification. If we have not contacted somebody in the previous three years and asked him or her to update his or her means, we will say that that is a departmental error. The other is that we have implemented new systems and IT systems to stop fraud from getting in, for example, the public services card and SAFE process. We have started to do more frequent reviews of some of our schemes based on discussions that were held at this committee in the previous Dáil, to have annual correspondence to remind people that if their circumstances have changed, they need to tell us. We have taken all of those measures and that is part of it.

The other thing that I would say is that fraud sometimes gets a lot of attention. Other Deputies who have been members of this committee have heard me say this before. Fraud is a very small part of what we do. I am always anxious to say to people that the reason we do control is twofold. The first is to reduce overpayments, whether due to our error, customer error, or fraud. The other matter is that we want to be able to assure people that there is integrity in the system, because there are sometimes newspapers and so on that run headlines about fraud and such. It is important, if we are to have social cohesion and confidence in the system, that the public generally sees that we take steps to try to make sure that there is not fraud in the system. We can report that the level of overpayments due to fraud is quite low. Some €131 million out of €20 billion is about 0.5%. It is important that people understand that.