Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Minister for her information and I am pleased by her confirmation that what is often referred to as a control saving as a result of fraud is not actually cash saved, but is instead a notional saving in a future year. Will the Minister identify some of the high risk areas in question? We discussed some of them this morning, including the 1,400 people at the ports and so on. Through publicity, any person who is chancing his or her arm in a particular area might know that those areas will be closely monitored.

I submitted a parliamentary question, but the Minister did not have the information with her. She might have it now. If a one-parent family is struck off because the parent is cohabiting, that person could immediately move on to jobseeker's allowance or become an adult dependant under someone else's claim. The Department would count the savings from removing that person from one set of payments, yet he or she might have moved into a different category of payment by the next morning. Is there a real saving? Where there is a suspicion of fraud, has the Department a mechanism whereby it can follow up with people to determine whether they have moved on to different payments?

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