Séamus Brennan (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)

In the case of the Department of Social and Family Affairs, the Comptroller and Auditor General's report drew particular attention to 46,000 overpayments amounting in value to €56 million. While taking on board the lessons to be learned from the report, it is also important as it shows the extent to which a minority of people often set out deliberately to mislead the Department. For instance, one third of the overpayments were traced to cases of fraud that mainly involved people working and at the same time claiming benefits to which they were not entitled. More than half of the overpayments were described in the report as a customer error. That means that when the cases of more than 20,000 welfare customers' means were reviewed, they were found to have means greater than had been disclosed to Department officials. Examples include almost 1,400 one parent family cases, accounting for more than €l7 million, and more than €7 million in overpayments in 409 estate cases where the full extent of the customer's means only came to light after his or her death.

When all this is distilled, the actual level of overpayment directly attributed to departmental error was €1.6 million or 3%. This amount is still too much and serves as a timely reminder of the need for constant vigilance and even tighter monitoring of expenditure management systems.

The overpayments figure for my Department, while substantial, also needs to be viewed in context as the Department of Social and Family Affairs is this year spending more than €12.2 billion on welfare benefits, entitlements and supports. That represents €1 in every €3 spent by the State in 2005. Every week, €250 million in benefits and entitlements reach more than 970,000 welfare customers and directly benefit almost 1.5 million men, women and children. The vast majority of these are genuine customers for whom the weekly payments are often a welfare lifeline and the main contribution to household income. It is also worth noting that each year my Department makes almost 60 million payments to customers. It is clear the Department is involved in assessing, administering and delivering payments on a major scale every day of the year. The Department is working constantly to update the monitoring and inspection systems and the strengthening of detection measures so that the maximum amount of overpayments are recouped and fraud is traced and prevented. Overpayments are recovered either by repayments from the customer or else by deductions from a subsequent social welfare payment. The scale of recoveries of overpayments is increasing. Last year, almost €20 million was recovered, compared with €7 million in 2000.

The Department is also involved in constant and intensive measures to identify and combat welfare fraud. Around 600 staff are engaged in anti-fraud work that has resulted in anti-fraud savings of almost €390 million in 2004. It is encouraging that in the first six months of 2005, savings of more than €200 million have been achieved. An impressive amount has been achieved by my Department in reducing fraud, overpayment and waste. Naturally, there is still much more to be done. Significant progress is being made in modernising and increasing the effectiveness of the Department's computer system which is central to tracking overpayments and curtailing fraud. The current computer system for recording and reporting overpayments has been in place since 1987. It is a stand alone system which requires a high degree of manual input. As the Department's Accounting Officer pointed out in responding to the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General, the inadequacies of the current system impact on the Department's overall ability to provide timely accurate data on over-payments. A major project is now in place to replace the current computer system. The requirements for the new system have been specified and the first phase is scheduled to go live in early 2006.

The new overpayments and debt management system will improve the identification of ways to prevent overpayments occurring and of methods to increase the levels of debts recovered. The system will facilitate the recording of overpayments, allow ongoing tracking of repayments, produce regular management reports and deliver a new debt management strategy. Armed with that extra resource the Department will be able to continue to deal with the overpayment and fraud situation I have outlined to the House.

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