Ms Niamh O'Donoghue:

I thank the Chairman for allowing me to make a brief opening statement. As well as examining the appropriation account for the Department of Social Protection and the Social Insurance Fund statutory accounts for 2015, I understand the committee wishes to examine the two chapters in the Comptroller and Auditor General’s Annual Report for 2015 on the regularity of social welfare payments and the roll-out of the public services card.

As requested, I provided the committee with an update on the two chapters, together with outturn figures for 2015, the Estimates for 2016 and the Department's annual report. Overall, I hope these documents indicate the scale and scope of the Department’s work.

The three key elements of the Department's business are: income support, activation of people of working age and the control of fraud and abuse. A longstanding objective of the social welfare system in Ireland has been the provision of income supports. This continues to be our primary objective.

Activation places a particular emphasis on measures to help long-term and young unemployed people find a route back to employment. I am pleased to report that the redevelopment of Intreo service centres across the country has now been completed. The development of Intreo, including active case management, plays an essential role in assisting many in their return to employment. For example, this year's Intreo careers fair took place in Dublin Castle on Tuesday, 6 September. Up to 3,000 jobseekers availed of the opportunity to meet employers across a range of sectors. Leading employers in retail, wholesale, home care services, transport, recruitment, consultancy, construction and technology were represented.

In addition, the Department's second jobs week took place from Monday, 26 September to Friday, 30 September this year. Every region in the country held various events which help jobseekers to become job ready. Jobs Week is also an opportunity to promote awareness of the suite of services, supports and products provided by the Department for both jobseekers and employers, which have been broadened and enhanced through the development of the Department's Intreo services and brand. This year, 150 events took place, some targeting jobseekers and some employers. Employers with vacancies were recruiting at these events also.

It is worth pointing out again that the Department considers that the vast majority of people who are supported by the Department are exercising their legitimate rights and receiving their appropriate entitlements. That being said, however, public confidence and trust in the welfare system requires us to be vigilant in both preventing and tackling fraudulent activity. To this end, the Department is keenly aware of the importance of continuing to enhance the systems and methods it employs to address the risk of non-compliance across its schemes. In early summer, we engaged in a number of control seminars with some 270 staff at which we discussed areas that should be reviewed. Suggestions and issues raised will be considered in the further development of our control strategy.

Turning specifically to the chapters being examined today, the Department seeks to ensure that social welfare fraud and abuse is minimised and that its control activity is focused appropriately. As I have outlined previously to the committee, fraud and error surveys are a key element of the Department’s overall control strategy. The surveys, which are a point-in-time measurement, identify areas of risk within schemes and the Department takes steps to address, ameliorate and eliminate the risks identified.

The surveys, which are a point-in-time measurement, identify areas of risk within schemes and the Department takes steps to address, ameliorate and eliminate the risks identified. The results of fraud-and-error surveys are used to focus the Department’s control activity where it is most likely to be effective. Chapter 9 of the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report looks at fraud-and-error surveys completed in previous years and, in particular, comments on the two most recently completed surveys, on farm assist and household benefits. While no specific recommendations have been made in this chapter, I understand a separate exercise will be carried out by the Comptroller and Auditor General to review methodology and verify figures later this year. We will continue to work with the Comptroller and Auditor General’s office to ensure that the surveys continue to meet the highest standards in terms of methodology and reporting of results.

The Department has agreed a schedule of surveys up to mid-2019 with the Comptroller and Auditor General’s office. This schedule commits the Department to doing an average of three surveys per year, which is challenging as each survey raises unique issues. A recommendation previously made by the Comptroller and Auditor General, in the 2014 chapter on regularity of social welfare payments, referred to a need to strengthen our capacity to carry our medical control reviews. I am happy to report that the Department has successfully appointed new medical practitioners as medical assessors and currently has 27.5 full-time equivalents, including the chief medical officer and deputy chief medical officer. A number of additional appointments are currently in train and, as a result, this number is expected to rise to over 29 full-time equivalents by January 2017. A further recruitment campaign will take place in November to ensure a panel is available to fill any vacancies arising in 2017 and to maintain these numbers.

Chapter 10 of the 2015 report refers to the roll-out of the public services card, PSC. The PSC is an important strand in modernising public service delivery and seeks to standardise and simplify how our public services are accessed. When a person registers through a secure registration process that provides a substantial level of assurance in relation to his or her identity, he is considered to be registered to a standard authentication framework environment, SAFE, level-2 standard. The PSC is a token of such registration.

The PSC is designed to replace other cards within the public sector, such as my Department’s free travel pass and the social services card, and to make it easier for providers of public services to verify the identity of customers in person and online. The PSC is now a requirement for first-time adult passport applicants in the State and for Irish citizenship. From the end of the year and beginning of next year, SAFE registration will be required by Revenue for first-time applicants for tax credits.

In terms of the roll-out of this project, some delays did occur, most notably around the time that the recession hit when, understandably, the Department had to prioritise other developments to deal with the demands that emerged at that time. However, the processes and the product itself have been considerably improved as a consequence. The PSC helps to safeguard the identity of individuals in that it makes it extremely difficult for others to commit identity fraud by stealing a person’s identity for the purpose o dealing with the public service. As a result, the PSC is, and will be, a key asset in the deterrence of identity fraud. Given the innovative nature of the project and the fact that there were not any ready references for comparison purposes, it was not possible in the early stages to determine precise costs and staffing requirements. It was not possible to estimate properly any cost until market testing via the procurement process had been completed in 2009. Staffing requirements could only be determined once the processes for registration and quality assurance had been designed and tested. This was completed in 2011.

To date, the Department has recorded €2.585 million in SAFE-related savings. It should be noted that these savings relate to the cases where the Department actually caught a person using a false identity. The Department cannot assess the actual savings that have been made in cases where a person signed off or claimed he or she no longer needed social assistance or a benefit instead of going through the SAFE registration process.

With over 2.2 million PSCs issued to date, my Department expects that the target of 3 million cards will be met by the end of 2017 and that the project will continue to provide considerable value to all individuals and public bodies for years to come.

The work of the Department in safeguarding the data underpinning the PSC and all other data relating to individuals who interact with us for income support and services is a critical element of our operations. Given the scale of its operations, the Department is one of the most significant data controllers in the State. I can assure the committee that the Department takes its responsibilities in relation to data protection extremely seriously and works closely with the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner to ensure that the highest standards continue to be applied in this regard.

I acknowledge the support of staff and colleagues and express my appreciation for their endeavours. The staff of the Department deal with many demanding challenges, across many schemes, programmes and projects. Please be assured that in delivering on our obligations, we are very conscious of our duties to our customers, the taxpayer and, of course, the Oireachtas. I am very happy to discuss any issues raised by the committee.