Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 14 March 2013

Public Accounts Committee

2011 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 38 – Social Protection
Chapter 21 – Expenditure on Welfare and Employment Schemes
Chapter 22 – Welfare Overpayment Debts
Chapter 23 – Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Social Insurance Fund – Annual Accounts 2011

10:55 am

Ms Niamh O'Donoghue:

I will refer to two different points I made in my opening statements. One is that we have a role that requires us to take a balanced view. We have to try to support people through income maintenance who are in vulnerable situations and ensure that need gets assessed and that payments get into payment quickly to those who are entitled to them while at the same time being extremely mindful of control of fraud. I suppose one of the things I would point to, which I mentioned in my opening statement, is that the introduction of our new integrated service presents us with a real opportunity to represent a cultural change in our engagement with our customers. So the social contract that I referred to where people's responsibilities are very clearly outlined is a new dimension to our engagement with customers. Part of that engagement with customers is a much more frequent interaction with them, both in terms of helping them on progression paths but also in terms of reinforcing our control agenda and ensuring that they continue to remain eligible for whatever payments they are entitled to. Absolutely, I understand that it is perceived that the level of prosecution is low.