John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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The Department does. I understand that we are talking about people with very little money. I deal with enough people who are in very tight situations. I will go back to the example of England. For those convicted in court, the Department for Work and Pensions has proposed introducing a two strike regime for imposing benefit deductions. It proposes to impose a loss of benefits for three months for a first conviction and six months for those convicted of benefit fraud on a second conviction. A third conviction would result in a loss of benefits for three years. It is a deterrent. I am of the opinion that a larger deterrent needs to be introduced in this country. We can spend a lot of time dealing with it after the fact. Ms O'Donoghue talks about the data and information the Department will utilise but we need to start thinking about the psychology before this occurs.

Every year, we receive reports from the Minister that are impressive with regard to the €600 million that has been saved when reviews are done throughout the different categories of payments, but we do not spend enough time thinking about how to deter people from doing this in the first place. The English obviously have thought about this and have put together proposals that are stricter. I think we need to consider it.

With regard to the recovery of overpayments, are there any new ways of examining how to recover overpayments? We have a debt bill of €343 million. Of that, 47% of the overpayment debt is more than five years old. Half those debts do not have any plan in place about how to get them back. When the study on the local offices in Clonmel and somewhere else was carried out, it was clear that there was no plan to recover many of the debts listed in that office. Could Ms O'Donoghue talk about that?