Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Social Welfare Pensions and Civil Registration Bill 2017. It makes amendments to the social welfare legislation, the Pensions Act and the Civil Registration Act.

I will speak briefly on the Civil Registration Act and will concentrate on the amendments relating to the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005. My question for the Minister is one that he might answer at Committee Stage. What is a waiting time for the issuance of birth, marriage and death certificates by the civil registration authority. There are considerable delays and it has got worse in recent times. I am aware of people being affected by this in my constituency. These are mothers who are badly in need of the qualified child allowance and child benefit when a new child is born, and they have to wait weeks on end to have their birth certificate issued from the local office. Those delays are new, I never encountered them before but I am seeing it this year. I ask that the Minister of State investigate this matter.

Another matter that has arisen on the civil registration offices is the delays for people to get an appointment of the civil registration of their intention to marry. I tabled a Parliamentary Question on this matter earlier and I am sure I will receive a response shortly. I have asked for a timetable on an office-by-office basis around the country. I hear that people are choosing the office in which they register because they hear that there is a big waiting list in their own county but the next county is not so busy. We are seeing all sorts of funny things. Again, it I have only encountered this issue this year. It is something I would like to have investigated.

When I get a letter from the civil registration office, it is on HSE headed paper. I know that this legislation is under the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection but it seems to be run through the HSE offices. I know the Department is responsible, but I do not know how one tallies with the other and there does not seem to be a clear line between the two. Historically, it may have been through the HSE but the Department has legal authority in this issue and it should check with the HSE that it is administering these issues on its behalf in the regional offices and investigate the delay.

That is all I have to say about the Civil Registration Act side of the legislation.

I will now come back to the substance of the legislation, which is designed to deter and reduce fraud in the social welfare system by providing for the publication on a quarterly basis of the names and addresses of persons convicted in a court of social welfare fraud. Nobody in the House stands over social welfare fraud. Everybody in the House must accept that people are defrauding the State, taxpayers and their neighbours of money, and this must be followed and pursued and they must pay it back. However, there is a remarkable imbalance in the legislation, and this legislation can be considered fair and reasonable only if it is balanced. It is fair enough in some respects, in so far as it goes, but I contrast this with what we have had at the Committee of Public Accounts in recent months.

Allegedly, €400 million or €500 million is due to the Department because of overpayments. There are various categories of overpayments. The Government is introducing legislation to chase these down and that is fine, but there should be similar legislation in terms of following and chasing down funds due to the redundancy and insolvency fund under the remit of the Department. An exact equivalent amount of €400 million or €500 million is allegedly due to the State, based on the amounts the Department records in its accounts, which come to the Committee of Public Accounts every year. I understand the majority will not be collected because many of the companies where the State paid statutory redundancy have gone bust, been liquidated and gone out of business, and some will take time. However, some of them are back on their feet and some of the companies have had restructuring. Some of these companies are now very strong and some are very profitable, and this is money that is due to the State. The Department has no mechanism whatever to follow this money. It makes a paltry effort. We have had it at the Committee of Public Accounts. The Department does not even know the details. This matter has moved from the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Employment because it was about redundancy and it was not really interested in it. That Department was more interested in giving out grants and not chasing up this issue. It has now landed at the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection and there is no interest in the Department. We asked questions at the Committee of Public Accounts and no significant information is coming through. I reiterate that the majority of what is allegedly owed needs to be forensically examined, and what is owed should be chased and what is not possible to collect we must face up to and it is only a figure on a sheet of paper.

I understand 10% to 15% of the fund comes through every year by way of people making payments back to the fund. I asked at the committee meeting about the fact this fund, this debt to the Government, does not show up. In other words, the debt people have due to alleged overpayment is shown on the State balance sheet as money owed to the State, but the money owed by employers to the redundancy and insolvency fund is miraculously excluded from the balance sheet of the State because somebody takes the view that if we get something we get something and if we do not we do not, so no real effort is made to follow it. It is referred to as a contingent asset and it is not recorded on the Government balance sheet and there is no real effort. I would like to see a balance in terms of examining this and seeing how much is owed and then dealing with this. If it is not owed we should be truthful about it, but some of it is owed and no adequate information is being obtained to follow it through.

I asked a simple question, that surely the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection can contact Revenue about a company and whether it is still trading and making VAT returns. It is very simple. There could not be anything more simple. Revenue is outstanding in chasing money on deposit interest retention tax and showing people with deposits in bank accounts in Ireland, England and other countries, and telling the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection that people in the system claiming money actually have deposits of €30,000 or €50,000 which they have not declared. Revenue is able to give great information to the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, but the Department does not seem to be able to say here is a list of companies that may owe it money and ask whether or not they are trading. If they are not trading that is fine, but the Department does not even know how to ask the question. I am just saying this legislation is not fair. It goes after the little guy who owes a small amount of money and ignores the big guy, but that is the Fine Gael way and I must be straight. That is why we have this legislation. It is the Fine Gael way to go after the little guy. The Minister of State, Deputy Stanton, is smiling. He can prove me wrong by including an equivalent measure in the legislation to chase employers who owe money to this fund and have not paid it. If he does this I will accept the balance and I will be happy to withdraw the comment at that stage.

The legislation is a bit of a charade. It is part of Leo's trick that he will be hard on social welfare. He said when he was at the Department that he would pass legislation, and we have it coming through now. The essence of this is to issue the names on a quarterly basis of people who have been convicted in court. Every court conviction is public record anyway. They are in the local and national newspapers. The Government will publish a list of something that is in the public record. It is sham and a charade and it is shallow, but it achieves the political aim to try to frighten and in some way cast aspersions on people in receipt of social welfare payments and try to categorise them all in this way. It will not put a name in the public arena that is not already in the public arena as a result of a court hearing and court conviction, because if people are not convicted they will not be published. I believe I have made my point on what I think on this.

Turning to other aspects of the Bill, section 7 is very important as it provides that decisions which deny entitlement to a benefit or payment must in all cases be made by a deciding officer. I want the Minister of State to think about this carefully. I do not believe we are on a sound legal footing here. Somebody applies for carers allowance, and the medical report states the person requires X amount of care, and the medical officer or qualified doctor states the person is entitled to it, and a deciding officer of I do not know what grade in the Department, perhaps administrative officer or assistant principal officer, with zero medical knowledge will be able to make a decision to overrule the medical evidence. This has to be re-examined. I understand there are potential court cases on this issue at present, whereby medical opinion has said one thing but the deciding officer has said another and the question is who is entitled to make a medical opinion. Most people would have thought it would be a person with a medical qualification, but the Government wants to stitch this in here, so that in all cases, and that is the reason it is here, it is ensured the medical person's view is not the view that prevails at the end of the day. If an administrative officer wants to overrule a medical opinion the legislation specifically provides a mechanism to do this and I believe it is wrong.

I ask the Minister of State to revisit this. What is the Government trying to close off here? There must be some parallel mechanism whereby the medical evidence stands on its own two feet. Perhaps it must go for a higher medical opinion in the Department. The Department recently recruited a number of doctors to examine some of these cases on the disability entitlement of a person being cared for, but administrative officers should not make the decisions on people's severe medical conditions. It is that simple. I do not believe the Minister of State can stand over this provision in the Bill, bar that the Government is trying to close off what is common sense, but it is a bit of an inconvenience for the Department to allow a medical officer make a medical decision. The Government needs to re-examine this.

With regard to section 8, I understand what is being said but I want to put a bit more into the public arena on this issue. It states that where an insurance company will pay up the money in a case where somebody had an injury or a disease, there is a mechanism whereby if the person has been in receipt of a payment from the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection the Department can obtain the money directly from the insurance company because the State was already paying it before the case came to be settled by the insurance company. This legislation allows for the first time ever that payments to a person in receipt of supplementary welfare allowance can be added into the mix of what can be recouped from the insurance company. I have no problem with this and it makes sense, but I ask the officials to consider some of the cases I have dealt with.

The other half of the equation - in several cases and I have been to an appeals officer who has overruled the decisions of the Department's deciding officers - includes cases where people have had to take the HSE to court for medical negligence. Where the State Claims Agency took the case, the person is awarded €50,000 or €100,000 as the case may be, and immediately when that money, which is as a result of the medical negligence of the State, is received people lose their social welfare entitlement because they have means. I have asked a series of parliamentary questions with regard to health, the HSE, the Office of the Chief State Solicitor and the Minister for Finance on whether some provision can be made to calculate the amount of the lump sum to be given when it is accepted there is medical negligence such that it will not in some way reduce the person's entitlement to a social welfare payment.

I had a case in this regard that I am thankful was overturned by the appeals officer, who saw sense and the foolishness of the legislation. A lady lost a child at delivery due to medical negligence and eventually, years later, got a settlement, which was paid into her bank account. She believed she received the amount in question from the State because of the State's medical negligence towards her but, lo and behold, the Revenue Commissioners informed the Department of Social Protection she had money in the bank and the latter came after her stating she had been claiming money to which she was not entitled and that she owed it €30,000. The State gave the woman €100,000 because of its medical negligence and another arm of the State came around to take €30,000 of it back. It was inhuman. They put the woman through torture several times. She lost her child and then had to go to the courts and get a settlement. Then, a couple of years later, she got a letter from the Department of Social Protection, and she had to go on her hands and knees begging and crying. It was unfair what was being done. She had the money and one arm of the State sought to take back what the other was giving because of the State's negligence.

We are very quick to call money back from the supplementary welfare allowance side, which I understand, but this must be balanced against circumstances where a person is being given a payment by the State. I accept the State Claims Agency is not within the Minister of State's purview. I have confirmed by way of responses to parliamentary questions I have asked that the State Claims Agency is not allowed, by legislation, to take into account any knock-on effects that the granting of the lump sum for medical negligence by the State can have on one's entitlement to a social welfare payment. There is a lack of follow-through. This legislation is fine but it is only half the picture. If the Minister of State wants to be balanced, he has to balance up what he is doing with some acknowledgement of this issue.

I had another case that was exactly the same. It involved a woman with a hand injury who got €100,000. I have encountered a couple of these cases. It is remarkable to note all the people who received money through the State Claims Agency because of medical negligence but who had money taken back by the Department of Social Protection, be it the disability allowance or whatever allowance they were then on because of the State's negligence. They are told they have money, thus affecting their payment. There is a lack of joined-up thinking. I ask the Government to stop the practice of the State giving with one hand and taking with the other.

The issue of the public service card has arisen extensively in regard to this legislation. The issues raised by the Data Protection Commissioner have to be taken into consideration and fully answered. Funnily, even if I am in a minority around here, I must state the public service card is a good idea. It might not be politically popular to say that. I have simple view: if one wants to interact with the State and wants a service from the State, the latter is entitled to have one mechanism by which one identifies oneself. People say that is a breach of this, that and the other but if there were proper data protection measures in place, it would be a correct approach to take. We all give out that, every time one goes to a different State agency, one has to have a different mechanism to prove one's means and who one is. The idea behind the card is good and my problem is that it is not going far enough. Let me state why. Some 100,000 of the 300,000 public servants work in the health service, which is the biggest arm of the State, and the HSE is now spending tens of millions of euro to introduce a new patient identification number system for patients in any hospital in the State such that if one is from Dublin and has a car crash in Cork, one's record can be found from the patient identification number. Lo and behold, that number is not the same as one's public service card number.

It gets worse in the HSE. It has 1.6 million people in receipt of medical cards, using a different numbering sequence that is not connected to the patient identification number or the public service card number. Therefore, I believe there is a lack of follow-through and logic in Departments. I understand from my discussions with the various Departments that some genius will be paid millions to write a software programme to match up a patient identification number with the PPS number in some way. It is not designed for this. The medical card number, the patient identification number and the PPS number should be one and the same. I know I will get run out of this House for talking common sense but I believe that makes eminent sense, and I ask people to consider the practicalities when one is dealing with the State. It would make everybody's life easier, including the people with the medical cards or patient identification numbers. I ask that the Government consider joining up all the public sector numbers that are on cards related to different arms of the public service.

I reiterate what Deputy Healy said about discrimination against women in respect of their contributory State pension. We all know of such cases. I had a case involving a lady who once did three weeks' work during summer holidays and then went to college in England and got married. When she came back, she was told she had a 40-year record on which her average would be checked. She was then told that, lo and behold, she was entitled to nothing because she did three weeks' work when she was 18 on a summer holiday. It is wrong, it is immoral, it is anti-women and anti-family. I hope that if the Department does not address this, somebody will take a case to the Supreme Court. The current arrangement will not stand a minute because it is totally discriminatory. I ask that this be dealt with.

Much of this legislation is about the issue of arrears. I have encountered cases in this regard. Where someone is making an application for any new payment, the Department checks whether arrears are due. I have encountered people who worked for their lives and were told all of a sudden, on applying for the State pension, that they owed €8,000 from 12 years previously because, during a summer period, they claimed for their wives when they had part-time jobs. The applicants respond by asking why the Department did not tell them that when they were working with a salary and had the means to pay it. They tell the Department it waited until they retired and that it now wants the money taken from their pension. The administration of the arrears system by the Department of Social Protection leaves an awful lot to be desired.

I will say more at the meeting of the Committee of Public Accounts because I have the chapter from the Comptroller and Auditor General's report. There are 130,000 cases of people who owe €100 or so. Remarkably, as I said on television some nights ago, there are 10,000 people who owe an average of €30,000 each, which amounts to €300,000,000. The Minister of State should get on his bike and chase the money down. If it amounts to so much in the cases in question, it should be collected where it is due. If it is not due, let us acknowledge that.

In regard to all the lists the Taoiseach wants to have published, last year there were 167 convictions in court in respect of prosecutions under the Social Welfare Act. That amounts to a couple per week. We are passing legislation in this Dáil for those 167 people whose names are already in the public arena having been through the courts so that the Taoiseach can actually put their names in the paper. It is pathetic; that is all I have to say.

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