Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Child benefit is a payment to parents for the support of their children. It is paid to some 615,000 families in respect of 1.18 million children, with an expenditure of approximately €1.9 billion in 2014. This payment, I am happy to say, increased by €5, to €135 per month, with effect from January 2015. Child benefit will remain a universal payment because of its crucial importance to families, mothers in particular, but also fathers who are parenting their children alone, and I intend to increase it again in the budget later this year.

Safeguarding the child benefit budget is a priority and in this regard, the Department has taken a very strong approach to ensuring that it is only paid to eligible families. A policy of issuing continuing eligibility certificates to parents commenced in 2008 and is still in operation. The control policy for the scheme is continually reviewed to ensure that the controls in place to prevent the kind of fraud and abuse the Deputy has referred to continue to be effective and relevant.

As a result of these reviews, additional enhanced and updated control measures are devised and implemented.

Control savings represent the amount of money that would have to be spent in future if the control work was not undertaken. They do not include cases of departmental or clerical error or where a customer voluntarily informs the Department of changes to his or her means or circumstances which results in a change to the rate of payment.

The total savings from child benefit control activity was €74 million in 2013. The Department undertook approximately 400,000 continuing eligibility reviews of child benefit customers in 2014. This control activity generated some €70 million in savings in respect of expenditure that would otherwise have occurred. The level of savings from this exercise has fallen in recent years owing to the effectiveness of the controls in the child benefit scheme. While I am satisfied that the control system is good, the systems are continually reviewed and upgraded as information technology develops.

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