Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

What is different is that we are targeting the use of the investigators. In other words, they are targeting areas where there may be evidence to suggest there are problems. This has been a particular feature of the work of the Department recently and I have stressed that this is important. We have continued to conduct a huge number of reviews, which involves writing to people to check whether they are living at the address given and so on. Most people are honest and, therefore, modern audits target the areas where there is reason to suspect there may be abuse. That is where I would like to see the emphasis. We are targeting for next year a significant increase in control savings, but we also want to target specifically areas where we have reason to believe there may be fraud. Up to September, some 12,000 members of the public had made contact with the Department pointing out areas of abuse of the system. They are not always right but it is interesting information.

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