Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 11:

In page 9, between lines 25 and 26, to insert the following:“Amendment of section 62 of Principal Act

7. Section 62 of the Principal Act is amended--

(a) in subsection (7) by inserting the following paragraphs after paragraph (c):

“(d) the person's aggregate income in the preceding twelve months, excluding reckonable earnings and any payments under this Act,

and

(e) the person's periods of absence outside the State in the preceding twelve months.”,

and

(b) by inserting the following subsection after subsection (7):

“(7A) Regulations made under subsection (7) may provide for the annual provision by claimants and recipients of bank and other financial institution statements indicating, to the extent these details are routinely recorded by the bank or institution, the amounts, sources, dates and locations of lodgements to their accounts and the dates, amounts, methods and places of withdrawals from those accounts.".".

I am afraid that there is not much we an say in seven minutes but I would like to make a few remarks relating to this specific amendment. It concerns giving the Department of Social Protection more powers to investigate whether social welfare benefits provided from the State - either child benefit or jobseeker's allowance - have been used abroad and therefore are not being used for their intended purpose. It is fair to say that the Minister has made it a mark of her savings strategy to tackle welfare fraud and I believe the proposed amendment would help in this objective.

Persons who are regularly absent from the State may not be genuinely seeking employment. That is clear. Persons who routinely withdraw money from their bank account at locations that are not in any way adjacent to or convenient to their place of residence on a regular basis may not be available for employment, or genuinely seeking employment, as is required to fulfil the criteria for jobseeker's allowance, or may be working elsewhere while claiming. The purpose of these proposed amendments is to permit investigators to review patterns in a person's financial transactions that could indicate systematic withdrawals abroad or at locations that are not consistent with the normal patterns for persons residing and working in their locality.

Depending on the experience gained from reviewing bank accounts in jobseeker's cases, there may be a case for extending this type of activity to other benefits and universal payments to detect cases of potential abuse. Examples would include where a claimant is deceased or otherwise does not meet the conditions for receipt by virtue of residence or employment abroad, or the receipts of earnings that do not fall within the normal income tax system, or perhaps that are consistent with the benefit being claimed. In the case of child benefit where the children reside in the EU but not in the State, analysis of bank statements of the accounts used for receipt of the benefit may provide very valuable insights on how unwarranted recourse to that scheme might be better managed by the Department officials.

Through the enactment of the Social Welfare and Pensions (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2013, the Minister has already been provided with additional powers to take funds directly from bank accounts, so if she could equally monitor transactions or lodgments which are based on geography, that may well give the Minister additional firepower to tackle welfare fraud and thus reduce the amount of more difficult and savage benefit cuts that she has been forced to make. Essentially, what I am advocating is that the savings which have to be found to fulfil our objectives for 2014 and beyond should be savings made from people who are genuinely defrauding the State, rather than those who are genuinely the most vulnerable in our society. I believe that this proposal would help the Minister in achieving that goal.

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