Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister knows the background to my amendment No. 20, that compensation payments made by the Health Service Executive, HSE, on foot of its abject failure to protect individual children and families should also be excluded from this scheme. I have discussed this issue with the Minister directly and I have written to her about it. I do not believe that, where the HSE has acted in a grossly ineffective manner which has led to a compensation payment being made to an individual child who has now come of age, the child should be penalised. I raise this specifically because in many cases these incidents have happened in rural Ireland. If a declaration along the lines proposed in the Bill has to be made it might as well be published in the newspaper. The big difficulty for the recipients of these moneys is that the HSE writes in very strict confidentiality clauses such that if the person discloses the information to the Department of Social Protection they could forfeit the compensation and the HSE could seek a refund. I hope that the Minister can address this anomaly in the legislation.

In respect of the recovery issue and fraud the Minister said in an interview with Pat Kenny on Newstalk that the fraud inspections would be divided 50-50 between Irish residents and immigrants. Will the Minister clarify that because most welfare fraud in this State takes place among our own citizens?

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