John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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I welcome Ms O'Donoghue and the other officials. This is a complex area involving many payments. I deal with many social welfare queries in my office. I am not saying I know everything about it, but we are quite busy. We have a slight concern over deterrents and how people view the system before they engage in fraudulent activity in particular. I will give an example of an application I printed. In many cases the only deterrent is the warning printed at the bottom of a typical application that states: " Warning: If you make a false statement or withhold information, you may be prosecuted leading to a fine, a prison term or both." Looking at the figures, the chances of that happening are quite small compared with other jurisdictions - I will come to that later.

In its Fraud Initiative 2011-2013, the Department recognised that an effective deterrent regime is important. It noted that effective debt recovery is an integral part of the deterrent regime and that the Department would take appropriate steps to effect the recovery of the debt, which is fine. The Comptroller and Auditor General has very comprehensively dealt with the issues on the surveys on fraud and error. He has identified the shortcomings in the local offices as being training, recovery of debt, etc. However, I am not concerned about after the fact but what happens beforehand and the thought process when an individual is tempted. There is considerably more temptation these days to commit welfare fraud for the obvious reasons. This can be compared with Revenue, for example. Among individuals thinking about going down the road of committing welfare fraud, is there sufficient deterrent in their mind before taking that initial step? That is our concern.

When I look at all these figures - I thank the liaison officer for putting all this together for me - the one concern I have is that we are dealing with it after the fact. Every year the Department issues press releases on the reviews and the savings made across the different payments. However, we need to work out how we can be more effective in deterring people from going down that road at the very beginning. I ask Ms O'Donoghue to outline her thoughts on that, which is clearly something the Department has identified through its initiative.