Olwyn Enright (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)

I will not press this too far. I am glad to hear from the Minister that €50 million in savings has been made. However, this causes me to question how much money has been wasted during the past number of years. If such savings have been made as a result of the detection of payments to people not eligible or entitled to them or by people who were deliberately claiming them when they should not have been doing so, the loss of money to the Exchequer, and the Department, is substantial. Savings of €50,000 in the period outlined by the Minister amounts to a great deal of money.

The same point can be made about child benefit payments. If €38 million in savings were made under that scheme — from what the Minister said, I gather they were made this year — and 5,000 claims were stopped, this amounts to a substantial amount of money being claimed that should not have been claimed. I have tabled questions on this, but in Question Time today questions are not to the Minister's Department. I would like to know how much was paid out in fraudulent claims that should not have been paid out.

The Minister said it was important she took prosecutions on foot of some of the claims and so on, yet 5,000 claims for child benefit were stopped and no prosecutions were taken on foot of them. I can understand that in some cases people could not afford to pay up, but 5,000 people were not entitled to that benefit and I cannot imagine all of them were in circumstances such that they should not have been the subject of prosecutions for claiming fraudulently.

I appreciate very much that the Minister's staff were under pressure. I welcome the fact that finally more people have been assigned to deal with the backlogs. Staffing being under pressure is one matter but this whole system being under pressure because of benefit payments being made to people who were not entitled to them and people needing money who cannot get it as a result of that puts families under pressure. The Minister needs to examine the entire operation of the system to ensure staff are able to devote sufficient time to deal with the issue of fraudulent claims. I appreciate that a staff of 600 are dealing with this, but many of them do other work as well. It is crucial that this is done. The Minister could easily assign more staff to this work, if many of these fraudulent claims were stopped. It would certainly represent value for taxpayers' money if more staff were assigned to deal with this matter.

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