Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

In recent years fraud and error surveys were undertaken for a number of the schemes, namely, child benefit and the family income supplement in 2004, the disability allowance in 2005, the PPSN allocation and the illness benefit in 2006, the State pension non-contributory scheme in 2007, the State pension contributory scheme in 2008 and review policies are now being finalised for the disability allowance, carer's allowance and the State pension non-contributory schemes. We are very much trying to keep on top of all of this.

Bearing in mind that a claim is only stopped when we know for a fact that the person is no longer entitled to it, it can be difficult to ascertain exactly how long prior to that the person was not entitled to it, particularly if that person has left the country. Of the 5,000 claims for child benefit payments stopped, 80% of them applied to non-nationals. They may well have been people who were working here legitimately and then found themselves without a job and have now left the country and that may have happened in the past few months. At the time of writing to them and they not responding, it involved 5,000 claims.

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