Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

The Department's control savings target for 2012 is €645 million with an associated target of reviewing 985,000 individual welfare claims. Control savings are a valuable performance indicator for the Department of year-on-year control activities and this year's targets will be kept under review during the coming months. It is important to point out that control savings are not actual moneys recovered by the Department, but an estimate of the value of the various control activities across the Department's schemes. They represent an estimate of the value of prevented future social welfare expenditure on claims that would have been incurred if this control work had not been conducted. They do not include any case where the customer voluntarily told the Department of a change in means or circumstances, leading to an adjustment to his or her rate of payment.

Actual moneys recovered arise where the Department has raised an overpayment in an individual case. In 2010, a total of 51,950 overpayments were assessed on scheme cases, amounting to €83.4 million. This represented 0.41% of total departmental expenditure. Overpayments arising from activity suspected of being fraudulent amounted to €25.9 million, representing less than 0.1% of total expenditure. The overpayments figures for 2011 will not be available until they are audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General.

This morning, Deputy Sean Fleming and I discussed various additional targeted fraud initiatives, including the initiative that I launched for the 2011-13 period. It will target specific high risk areas through the work of the special investigations unit.

Additional Information not given on the floor of the House.

The Deputy may be familiar with the Department's 2011-13 fraud initiative, which sets out a range of actions to combat fraud and abuse of the social welfare system and to ensure public confidence and trust in the system. These actions will be reviewed periodically and updated, as required, given emerging trends. The consequences for social welfare fraud can be severe. Prosecutions may be taken against persons who defraud the social welfare system and employers who fail to carry out their statutory obligations. A person found guilty of abusing the social welfare system may be fined or imprisoned.

I am conscious of the need to protect public money and I am determined to ensure that abuse of the system is prevented or, where detected, dealt with effectively. With this in mind, I propose to give social welfare inspectors increased powers via the Social Welfare and Pensions Bill 2012, which is before the Oireachtas. The proposed new powers will enable inspectors to detect and combat social welfare fraud at ports and airports, make inquiries of landlords and require identity checks for social welfare claims.

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