Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish to take this opportunity to wish the Taoiseach, Deputy Enda Kenny, well following the announcement of his retirement as Taoiseach in the coming days. I wish him well on a personal level. For many in Fine Gael, his has been a very successful tenure. There will be other opportunities to debate his legacy but I would like to wish him well at this stage.

Last month the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Varadkar, launched what is essentially a State sponsored, self-promoting public campaign calling on people to report those they suspect of engaging in social welfare fraud.

The claim that over €500 million was saved in 2016 through a range of anti-fraud measures within the Department of Social Protection is central to this public campaign. The Minister has been found to have embellished and manipulated the social welfare figures. The actual figure for fraud is closer to €41 million, or 0.2% of the social welfare budget. It has been revealed that the estimate figures include moneys that would have been saved over 52 weeks in the cases of some payments and over 136 weeks in other cases, rather than what has actually been saved. It is possible that the inaccuracy of €450 million in the Minister's calculations can be attributed not to a miscalculation but to a calculated tactic as part of his leadership challenge. The Minister's campaign targets a vulnerable cohort of people including the elderly, lone parents, people with disabilities and the unemployed.

This level of scrutiny is not replicated when it comes to tackling white-collar crime. Over the past ten years, Ireland has lost approximately €25 billion through economic crime. This loss of €2.5 billion a year equates to more than 60 times the annual level of social welfare fraud. The Exchequer has lost tens of billions of euro through the activities of NAMA in extremely suspicious circumstances involving the current Government. The sale of NAMA's Northern loanbook led to a recorded loss of €162 million. NAMA recorded total losses of €800 million in respect of its Northern Ireland loan portfolio between 2010 and 2014. The Government is refusing to accept that there is anything wrong with this. When 15,000 people were defrauded by Irish banks on their mortgage interest rates, it caused misery and led to considerable losses for families. What about the 100 families that have lost their homes as a result of this fraud? It has been calculated that over the lifetimes of these mortgages, the amount of money involved in this criminal action is at least €500 million.

The Government has never taken white-collar crime seriously. The staffing levels of the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement have decreased by more than 18% since 2010. The number of gardaí working in the office has been reduced by 25%. Furthermore, the 2015 Garda Síochána Inspectorate report noted that "the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation are struggling to manage the volume of suspicious financial transaction reports forwarded to them as part of money laundering and terrorist financing legislation". We do not even collate statistics on white-collar crime. The figures that are drawn up are combined with welfare fraud statistics in an effort to massage the figures. If the Government had paid as much attention to white-collar criminals as it is now paying to potential social welfare fraud, it could have saved tens of billions of euro, which is far more than the €41 million that is lost in social welfare fraud each year. When will the Government begin to address this scandal by targeting the corporate criminals and tax cheats who have escaped its public campaign? When will it target criminals in suits as vigorously as it is targeting those who depend on social welfare?

See this speech in context