Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

We have figures up to August, as the year is not complete yet. There were 401,000 reviews up to that date and these resulted in some €388 million in control savings. This compares with €281 million achieved in the same period last year. Therefore, the staff of the Department are doing very well on this. The reviews are yielding more control savings. We will know the total outturn by the end of the year, but the review is yielding significant savings.

With regard to the inspectors and fraud, the work of approximately 620 staff includes control activity. This includes staff involved in the processing and payment of new claims, including staff in investigations who work at local and regional headquarters level. Some 200 of those staff work full-time on control work while the other 420 staff are responsible for both routine investigations relating to new claims and the reviews of customer claims. Of the 200 inspectors, 89 are in the special investigation unit, the exclusive function of which is fraud prevention, detection and deterrence. The Deputy will recall that in the debate on the Social Welfare and Pensions Bill before the summer recess, I sought and got from the Dáil additional powers relating to multi-agency investigations and co-operation. We want to have a greater presence of social welfare inspectors on the street, as it were. For example, next year we propose to increase significantly the number of visits to employers for the purpose of deterring black economy activity, where people in employment are not recorded as working.

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