Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

The advertising campaign which lies behind this Bill blared, "Welfare Cheats Cheat Us All". It was designed to be a launch pad for the then Minister's successful dog whistle campaign for Taoiseach. The Bill gives backing to one of the most cruel and cynical attempts to whip up the idea that there is widespread welfare fraud and in doing so to create a cynical and self-serving narrative that would justify increased repressive measures against those who claim welfare payments as well as justifying cuts to welfare.

The Bill is not about welfare fraud. Rather, it is about portraying the then Minister, Deputy Leo Varadkar, as tough on welfare cheats and those who fail to get up early in the morning. People within his Department disagreed with him on the use of the word "cheats" and the figures on which his campaign was based were completely bogus. It referred to a supposed €500 million last year, when in reality the figure was just over €50 million, or one tenth of the figure, according to a fact check in the journal.ie. That is out of a total expenditure by the Department of €20 billion.

Former welfare fraud inspector, Bernadette Gorman, estimated the fraud level to be lower again at €41 million, which is in line with the Department’s fraud initiative report which found that the rate of fraud was 0.127%. Who is the cheat? Is it people who are in receipt of social welfare? I do not think so. I think it is the Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, and Fine Gael who are cheating. They were cheating in terms of the figures and cheating us all in terms of using public funds to have what was, in effect, a State-sponsored election campaign aimed at Fine Gael members which cost us over €200,000.

If one believed the propaganda one would think that the level of fraud is skyrocketing. However, the actual level of overpayments due to fraud has been declining in recent years. It was €41 million in 2016, €49 million in 2015 and €52 million 2014. The loss in State funds from overpayments is minimal and is largely due to genuine errors. The Department’s fraud initiative progress report backs up the theory that error rather than fraud is the main reason for overpayments.

Total overpayments for last year were €110 million, with customer error contributing €46.7 million to the amount. The Taoiseach and then Minister, Deputy Varadkar, said his Department recovered €82 million in overpayments last year. This shows that where mistakes happen people, in the main, pay back the money owed.

Let us contrast the massive resources and propaganda around the detection of welfare fraud with the resources put into detecting underpayment of tax by business. For example, of 385 audits on companies in 2013, additional liability was found in 77% of cases resulting in a total of almost €6 million. Revenue got €61 million from 276 of the 800 hospital consultants who were audited this year. Despite consistently bringing in large amounts of undeclared tax, Revenue’s risk-based audits have decreased 30% since 2012.

The criminalisation of the unemployed and the sick is graphically seen in a project currently under way in the Department to share data with the RSA in order to link car registration data with welfare records. It is an attempt to be able to set up Garda checkpoints, with Department officials on hand, to use driver licence data to check if a person is claiming benefits. It would be a scandal if this was allowed to continue. It has significant civil liberties implications, as does the public services card, and is a major waste of Department and Garda resources.

Another section of the Bill which Solidarity and the Socialist Party are strongly opposed to is that relating to expanded automated decisions.

This is clearly about reducing staff levels. The Minister says it is already in place for simple requests such as increasing child benefit for the second or subsequent child. However, this Bill would see it extended to more complex decisions. It will lead to a poorer service and would almost definitely result in people under-claiming or leave applicants open to being overpaid due to errors being made in applications and then being accused of fraud. It will especially be the case for those who have literacy issues or who do not have access to computers.

The Minister claims that where a decision is made to reject a claim, it must be made in person. However, clearly, it will initially be rejected by a computer - computer says "No" - and that decision will have to be reviewed. In the context of staff shortages and the pressure of work, one can imagine a situation where, in many cases, it will involve a rubber stamping rather than a real review.

What is this about? It is about two things. It is about the immediate short-term advantage of Varadkar appealing cynically to a right-wing base as part of this "get up early in the morning", "republic of opportunities", "people on the minimum wage are middle class" nonsense-----

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