Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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That is fine. The witnesses get the point. I propose that money be collected a bit earlier, if possible. If the recipient of overpayments is in employment, he might be in a position to write the cheque and pay, but he is not necessarily asked to do so.

On the compliance and anti-fraud strategy and procurement, the Department proposes to undertake site visits, especially where contractors are working on public service projects. Obviously, we are talking about schools. I am on public record several times as having said several schools have been milked in my constituency. Busloads of people were claiming social welfare outside the county and were being bussed back to the county in the afternoon where they continued to work as normal. They showed up on a Thursday morning. This is public information and the story has been publicly covered. The Minister for Education and Skills announced a measure on this a while ago. It applies to road contracts and other contracts. Why has action been so slow? The Department seems to have done very little on this. It has required agitation among workers who might not have got a job on a site and also complaints to the Department through the unions or individuals. These workers say they are registered tradesman but cannot work on a particular site. They state they know there are people on the site who are doing the work of tradesmen but who are claiming the dole somewhere else. It has taken a lot of shouting and screaming and complaints by people who are entitled to work on the various sites for action to be taken. The Department has been a bit slow in that area.