Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Ar dtús báire, ba mhaith liom buíochas a ghabháil leo siúd a thug cabhair dom an Bille seo a chur le chéile agus a thabhairt chun cinn. Ba mhaith liom freisin buíochas a ghabháil leo siúd a thug comhairle dom maidir leis an tairiscint difiriúil agus an samhlaíocht atá taobh thiar de.

An fáth gur thosnaigh muid ag plé maithiúnais ná amnesty ná chun déileáil leis an sáinn ina bhfuil siúd ata gafa sa chóras leasa shóisialaigh a shíleann - nó a bhfuil a fhios acu - go bhfuil an iomarca á fháil acu, no a fuair iomarca i dtréimhse atá thart, ach atá eagla orthu sin a admháil toisc nach mbeadh sé ar a gcumas an t-airgead a aisíoc, in aineoinn nach orthu atá an locht go minic. Sin an fáth go bhfuil muid ag iarraidh déileáil le seo agus sin an comhthéacs don Bhille seo.

What I am putting forward today is a simple, innovative and practical proposal to deal with a situation in which many people on social welfare find themselves. A social welfare amnesty would allow those in receipt of social welfare overpayments, often through no fault of their own, to come forward without fear of penalties, prosecution or demands for repayment, regularise their payments and have a line drawn in the sand under past irregularities.

We are living in distressing times and everyone has been focused on the economy and the cost of everything in recent years. Irish people are probably the most knowledgeable people in the world in respect of how the economy works or falters. Due to the scale of the collapse and the significant burden of having to shoulder repayments of debt that is not theirs, and because the approach of this Government and previous Governments is failing and increasing the burden on ordinary people, people are, as the saying goes, looking outside the box. They are being imaginative, and I have been lobbied, as have other Deputies, by many citizens with interesting proposals on how to extract themselves and this State from the crisis we are in, how to share the burden more fairly or how to land it where the fault lies most - namely, on the gamblers, speculators and financial institutions.

My party and I have been challenged by this Government and the previous one to come up with alternatives and back up the proposals we have made. We have published these annually as alternative budgets, only to have them rejected without proper analysis by blinkered Government ministers and often by their backbenchers. I urge Government Deputies, particularly Labour Party Deputies, even at this late stage, to pause and take time to read the Sinn Féin submissions, or, if they are afraid they may be contaminated by them, to read the TASC and Social Justice Ireland reports or submissions by the trade union movement. There are alternatives, with logic behind them, to austerity and the course that was taken by Fianna Fáil and has now been adopted with gusto by this Government. There is always an alternative, which is sometimes unpalatable, riskier or more complex. The common thread in all the submissions I mentioned is that they seek protect the vulnerable in the first instance and go after the wealth that is being held by a few in our country.

It is in that context that I set about my social welfare amnesty proposal. Rather than just proposing a small saving to the Exchequer and letting it lie there, I decided that I would put meat on the bones of an idea that came about in discussions with the Minister and Department officials in the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Education and Social Protection about control savings, fraud, overpayments and underpayments. It is acknowledged that many people are caught in a bind. We are acutely aware that most social welfare payments are inadequate to meet the needs of dependants, but that is the level they are at. Many social welfare-dependent households are well below the poverty line and are struggling to pay the bills or put food on the table. If they receive an overpayment of €5 or €10 per week through human error, be it their own or that of the Department, it makes a significant difference to their lives.

We regularly see media headlines screaming about dole fraud and cheats and a figure of €500 million or €600 million is bandied about although the real figure is much less. The actual figure recovered last year will be in the region of €30 million. In the past, it has been between €20 million and €24 million or €25 million. The hugely inflated figure of €500 million or €600 million is a control saving, which is an estimate of what the Department would have spent over time if the overpayment had not been identified and corrected. It is an accounting mechanism with its own reasoning but it is not good enough to bandy it about in the way that has been done. As I have stated in the explanatory memorandum that accompanies the Bill today, the level of fraud and error in the State's social welfare system is estimated to account for an average of 3.4% of the total spend on social protection and, of this, fraud accounts for a shrinking minority of less than one third.

There is no denying that there are a number of people receiving more than they are entitled to, but they are afraid to put up their hands and alert the Department because they simply cannot afford to pay it back. They are caught in a bind because if they come forward, they will end up with less money weekly and their children will suffer. One might say this is taxpayers' money that does not belong to them and, technically, one would be correct, but I will cite a recent example to show how this State has one yardstick for the poor and another for the rich. A report in the Irish Examiner on New Year's Eve said it all for me and showed that while the State will attempt to recoup every last cent from a pensioner or single mother who makes an error and receives an additional €10 per week for a year, no attempt will be made to recover the €160,000 that was overpaid in error to the HSE director designate, Tony O'Brien, since 2006 through no fault of his own. There is no slight on him. It was a clerical error but no attempt will be made to recover that money.

There is one rule for one group and another for the others. This has happened even though the Department of Health asked the HSE to take corrective steps.

Any of us in this Chamber could list several of the cases in which we were approached by people in distress because they or the Department noticed an overpayment. These individuals are struggling to deal with the regularisation of those payments. One case which came across my desk while I was preparing this legislation last September involved a person moving from a disability payment to the partial capacity payment. The women in question spotted an error and reported it but it fell to her to pay it back. It was a stressful period in her life because her brother had just died and she was facing a major operation. She was honest enough to point out that the Department made a mistake but she suffered the consequences for doing so.

When the media run their banner headlines, often fed by Ministers, about €600 million in social welfare fraud they forget to acknowledge that most of it is due to clerical or, sometimes, applicant error. They forget to say that the reason for such a high level of error is the complexity of the various social welfare schemes, the means tests employed and the complexity of some of the forms that need to be completed. Upwards of 20% of the Irish population have poor literacy skills. If further proof was needed of levels of error and complexity one needs only look at the success rate of social welfare appeals, the reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General or the Department's fraud and error survey. A random sample of 1,000 jobseeker's allowance cases which were reviewed in September 2010 revealed that 16% of claims were either over or under paid and these payments were adjusted or terminated accordingly. The explanations for the adjustment and terminations were as follows - 3% due to suspected fraud; 8% due to claimant error; and 4.4% due to departmental error.

If the error is not detected early enough, the overpayments mount up very rapidly. An additional €10 per week for two years amounts to more than €1,000, which the Department then demands to be repaid. Somebody who is in receipt of the full rate of social welfare payment does not have an alternative source of income and the repayments must come from his or her weekly stipend from the State. Anybody who tries to eke out a living on the social welfare payment will understand how daunting it can be to be asked to come up with €1,000. I urge the Minister to take on board the constructive proposals we have made and, if need be, allow the Bill to go to Committee Stage so that we can tease out its details in order to take an innovative and one-off approach to social welfare errors.

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