Mr. John McKeon:

The Deputy may be talking about the campaign earlier on this year. The Department runs communication campaigns regularly. This year already we have done ten campaigns. We have done a campaign on invalidity pensions, treatment benefit, back to school clothing and footwear allowance, maternity, paternity, all of which would have been as extensive as the campaign on fraud. The only campaign that got a lot of attention was the fraud campaign. It goes back to the point I was making, taking something that the Department is correct in doing, but which can trigger a headline that sensationalises it. When one thinks about a communication campaign on the issue of fraud and control, there are three objectives and three audiences that one is targeting. The first objective is to notify and inform and that gets to the point of people being aware that when their circumstances change and their means increases or their savings increase, they should inform the Department. If one looks at the text of the campaigns, and most of the communication, that was the main point. The second audience is people who might be thinking of defrauding the system and the objective is to deter them. We are saying to people that the Department is on top of the fraud issue, that if people try to defraud the system we will catch them and there will be consequences. That is a good and wholesome thing to do. The third element to the campaign is to assure the public. A large part of our audience - and this is sometimes forgotten when we talk about welfare and I referred in my opening statement about staff being aware of their responsibility to contributors and taxpayers - are the people who fund the system and we need to give them an assurance that the Department is not ignoring fraud or that we are not soft on fraud. The three objectives of the Department's communications strategy are to inform, to deter and to assure the public. I take on board the Deputy's concerns