Ms Niamh O'Donoghue:

I cannot say definitively that they would never have been uncovered, but let us say that the technology allowed us to uncover them very quickly. Very serious cases were identified that have gone through the courts, and custodial sentences have been handed down. It also has a secondary effect. We have been inviting people to come in, and we now have the legislative power to suspend or stop a payment if somebody does not engage with us. On foot of that, somewhere over 200 payments have been stopped by virtue of people not attending, having gone through a whole range of natural justice processes to enable them to attend to be registered. We really feel that it has contributed enormously on the fraud side, as well as the customer service side. Close to 400,000 people now have a public service card with the free travel badge on it, which provides much greater security to transport providers in relation to providing a service to people who are actually entitled to it.