Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

No, there are no sanctions against a person making a complaint. In fairness, we cannot question a person's bona fides when what he or she is trying to do is save the public money. One does not create difficulty for the person against whom a complaint is made because the person might not even be aware of it. Inspectors do not arrive on a person's doorstep and say that a complaint has been made. Complaints can be examined as a desk exercise in that one can check a person's documentation, Revenue details and employment record.

The example of lone parents is a particularly horrendous one. I did not speak to the inspector about the case in question but one should bear in mind that every scheme has conditions. If one is a jobseeker, one has to be seeking employment. If one is on a back to education payment, one has to attend a course. If one is in receipt of a disability or invalidity payment, one has to be restricted in the work one is able to do. If one is a lone parent, one has to be parenting alone; one must not be cohabiting. It is one of the very strict conditions of the payment.

The Department regularly carries out fraud and error surveys on all the various schemes. It found that there was a 6.4% fraud in the lone parent family payment. That is why one has to follow up on all of those issues. Cohabitation is a particularly difficult category to prove. It is much easier to investigate someone's income because one can cross-check with Revenue and we carry out data matches with various Departments. However, in the context of State money being expended - Members have spoken about clamping down on fraud and controlling expenditure, and they will do so again - one has to ensure that whatever the criteria are for those schemes, that they are being met. If one wants to change the schemes, sin scéal eile, but as long as we have conditions, such as for the lone parent family payment, that a person can only earn a certain amount of money and that he or she must not be cohabiting, then it is the duty of the Department of Social and Family Affairs to ensure that those criteria are being met. One does not want to be intrusive or to have Peeping Toms, but one has to ensure that where taxpayers' money is being spent it is going to the right people.