Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The compliance on anti-fraud strategy that I launched earlier this year is a rolled out programme for 2014 to 2018, and if anybody wants a detailed copy, it is on the website or we can send it. Under the additional measures in the strategy, I want to move to using what has become a very fashionable term - big data. This means using predictive analytical techniques to enhance the identification of areas of the Department's activities, or individuals or locations, where there is a particular risk of fraud, therefore targeting investigations specifically at high risk areas. Particularly at the request of the Committee of Public Accounts and the Comptroller and Auditor General, we carry out surveys on a phased basis of all the operational headings we have been discussing. These are standard surveys of a population of 1,000 chosen at random following normal sampling techniques. I expect that predictive analytical techniques will help the Department to reduce fraud. Fraudsters are becoming more sophisticated all the time. While the development of online systems has been a boon, it has also been a boon for people who engage in fraud. Using predictive analytics and modelling the risk profiles are going to be very important.

We are also enhancing debt recovery through a new debt management system which we will have live by the end of 2014. This is another IT platform that we have been building. On Deputy Ó Snodaigh's point in this regard, the precise amount we recovered in 2013 was €70.7 million, and the informal figures I have seen for this year are a little more than that. These are very significant recoveries, and they have pretty much doubled since we adopted the new techniques.

The other matter about which I have spoken at some length and which it has taken some time to implement is the secondment of 20 gardaí to the Department's special investigations unit. These officers will increase specifically the investigative capacity of the Department to prevent, detect and deter social welfare fraud. There has been significant interest on the part of serving members of the Garda Síochána in working with the Department. I am delighted by that, and we expect to have them in place in the next month or two.

There was also a reference by Deputy Daly with regard to ports and airports. I am happy to say that with the support of both the Dáil and the Seanad, we changed that legislation two years ago so that social welfare officers at airports can question somebody if they believe that this person has been entering and re-entering the country in order to claim social welfare. There have been a number of cases that were very widely reported by the media around the country, and I think the message has gone out that Ireland is not a soft touch. There have been Irish people who went to work abroad and continued to claim, and there have also been people who immigrated to this country, then returned home and continued to claim illegally. In some of these cases we found that people have had multiple claims because not only have they been claiming wrongly, but they have also been involved in identity fraud. Again, some of those cases have been reported in the media.