Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Question 37: To ask the Minister for Social Protection the amount of money saved by her through measures identifying welfare fraud and non-malicious overpayments, respectively, each month to date in 2011. [15314/11]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The prevention of fraud and abuse of the social welfare system is an integral part of the day-to-day work of the Department. A key objective of the Department's control strategy is to ensure that the right person is paid the right amount of money at the right time. A four-pronged control strategy has been adopted by the Department, namely;

· the prevention of fraud and error at the initial claim stage;

· early detection through effective review of claims in payment;

· measures to deter fraud; and

· the pursuit and recovery of overpayments.

Control savings are an estimate of savings from various control activities across all the social welfare scheme areas. Control savings are not actual monies recovered by the Department but are good indications of the increase in social welfare expenditure that would occur if these activities did not take place.

The control savings target for 2011 is €540 million with a target of reviewing 780,000 individual welfare claims.

As at the end of April 2011 approximately €183m control savings were recorded as a result of 193,269 reviews carried out. A month on month breakdown of these savings is as follows

Measures to control fraud and abuse include desk reviews of claim papers, home visits, the issue of review forms to selected customers, database checking, medical reviews in the case of illness payments etc. The Department is also engaged in data matching with other Government Departments and public bodies for control purposes.

Actual monies recovered arise where the Department raises overpayments in individual cases, where evidence is collated which can support statutory retrospective decisions, which may be subsequently subject to appeal to the Social Welfare Appeals Office or to a court of law. All overpayments assessed are recoverable and are pursued by the Department.

Data in relation to overpayments in 2011 in not yet available, and will be subject to audit by the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General.

The data and accounts in relation to overpayments for 2010 are currently being audited by the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General as part of the statutory accounts of the Department.

Total overpayments in 2009 in respect of suspected fraud and departmental error amounted to €24.7m. In 2009, the Department recorded customer overpayments in fraud or suspected fraud cases, to a value of €20.7m. The departmental error overpayments amounted to 6% of total overpayments, valued at €3.9m. These departmental error overpayments account for a relatively small percentage (0.02%) of total expenditure, i.e. (€3.9m from €19.9 billion scheme expenditure).