Finian McGrath (Dublin North Central, Independent)
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36. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection if she will investigate a matter (details supplied) regarding social welfare fraud; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [33786/15]

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.

The Department has set out its strategic approach to tackling fraud and error in the Compliance and Anti-Fraud Strategy. It includes systematic measures to prevent and detect fraud and to ensure effective debt recovery and deterrence measures are in place. As part of these measures, the Department is continuing to improve and utilise more innovative approaches to prevent and detect fraud.

A key measure of control activity is the value of control savings achieved by the Department on an annual basis. Control savings are an estimate of the value of various control activities across schemes in payment. They represent the value of prevented expenditure over a future period that would have been incurred if investigative and control work had not been carried out. In this context the Department undertakes a substantial number of control reviews each year. In 2014 over 1m control reviews were carried out yielding control savings of €505m, 99% of the overall target set for 2014. A similar level of savings is expected in 2015. In addition work is ongoing utilising predictive analytics techniques to identify non-compliance amongst existing customers of the three main working age schemes. These predictive models will enable the Department to detect more non-compliant cases and to do so more efficiently.

Furthermore the presence on the ground has been increased through the secondment of 20 Gardaí to the Department’s Special Investigation Unit. These officers are augmenting the resources and expertise available to the Department to detect and investigate fraud.

Effective deterrence is also necessary to address fraud. It is important to ensure appropriate sanctions can be applied where fraud is discovered. Where an individual committing social welfare fraud thinks that the potential penalty or sanction is minimal, relative to the potential gain, then fraudulent activity will be encouraged and will most likely continue.

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. Enhanced debt recovery is being achieved through a new debt management system which went live in 2014. €83m in overpayments were recovered in 2014, €8m more than the target set for the year and an increase of over 17% on the amount recovered in 2013 (€71m approx.). In addition over 315 cases were submitted for prosecution, which was in excess of the target set for last year.

The overall aim of the Department’s approach to tackling fraud and incorrect payments is to ensure that the available resources are targeted at, and are available for, the people, who need them most.