Mr. John McKeon:

I think that is where we are. The Deputy will have heard one of his colleagues talking earlier about one of his constituents who has a disability, where we took 12 weeks to determine the claim. We could have taken four weeks to determine it but that would have consequences. If we wanted to reduce fraud and error on, say, disability allowance claims, it could take a lot longer to award them and that is not in anybody's interest.

As I often say, I worked in the telecommunications sector for a long time with Telecom Éireann, Eir and Eircom. The bad debt rate in that organisation, which is considered a good bad debt rate, was about 5%. That is an organisation that had the ability to cut off the only telephone line a person had, and even with that it was 5%. Commercial businesses generally operate at about 5% bad debt. Retail businesses operate on what is called a leakage rate of 3% and that is their target. They target 3% leakage, which is basically pilfering. We are at or around the industry standard.