Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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29. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the measures taken by her Department to crack down on welfare fraud; the amount of revenue saved by her Department by these measures in each of the past five years; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [17236/15]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The vast majority of people on social welfare are claiming the correct entitlement due to them. However, a small minority is not and a range of measures are employed by the Department to ensure that social welfare fraud and abuse is minimised and that its control activity is appropriately focused.

Since 2011 there has been a number of significant measures undertaken which have enhanced the prevention and detection of social welfare fraud. These measures are being progressed under the Compliance and Anti-Fraud Strategy 2014 – 2018. The Strategy builds on the approaches that had been successfully rolled out over the past couple of years. These include the continued roll-out of the Public Services Card, enhanced data sharing with other Government Departments and Agencies and a number of significant legislative measures.

The Department recognises that fraud investigation and control can be assisted through the application of a range of new technologies. In this context, the Department has recently commenced a project utilising analytics technology to predict which claims are more likely to be fraudulent. When this technology is in place, it will enable the Department to target higher risk cases for investigation and to do so faster.

In addition, since early Dec 2014, 20 Gardaí have been seconded to the Department's Special Investigation Unit. These officers will ensure a greater presence on the ground and will increase the investigative capacity and expertise of the Department to prevent, detect and deter social welfare fraud.

The emphasis continues to be on preventing fraud and error from entering the system in the first place. However, where fraud is discovered it is important that there are appropriate sanctions in place. In this regard, the Department is proactively targeting persons with overpayments to ensure all persons who have a social welfare overpayment are making a contribution towards the repayment of the debt outstanding. A number of legislative provisions have been introduced to strengthen the Department's capacity to recover debt and, in addition, a new debt management system went live in November 2014. It is also the Department's policy to consider for prosecution cases of fraud against the social welfare system.

The value of the Department's control work is measured in terms of control savings. Control savings are used as a performance indicator for year-on-year activities and are an estimate of the value of the various control activities across the schemes in payment. They refer to future expenditure that would have been incurred but for this control work. Without this control work, social welfare expenditure would increase by this amount over time.

The table provides the details of the control savings achieved and the number of control reviews undertaken for the past 5 years:

The outcomes demonstrate that the Department's more intense control focus in recent years is having a positive impact on the level of fraud and error in the social welfare system.

Fraud detection and control systems have been refined and enhanced in recent years and are subject to continuing review. Overall, I believe that this is resulting in less opportunity to commit fraud and less chance of claims being in payment at an incorrect rate through fraud or error.