John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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259. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the details of the anti-fraud and control measures with the savings for each totalling €500 million used by his Department in 2016; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [22838/17]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The Department of Social Protection uses a wide range of control measures as part of its strategy to combat fraud and improve compliance in the social welfare system. The control strategy is set out in the Department Compliance and Anti-fraud Strategy 2014 to 2018. The Department publishes an annual report on the implementation of the main actions plans and progress against targets – the strategy document and the annual reports are published on the Department’s website www.welfare.ie.I plan to publish the annual report for 2016 in the coming weeks.

Reviews and investigations of entitlements are conducted by social welfare staff, social welfare inspectors and inspectors assigned to the Special Investigations Unit and a combination of desk-based assessment of entitlements, direct enquiries with recipients of social welfare payments, site and employer visits and face-to-face interviews are used. In 2016, 950,000 such reviews were undertaken across the Department’s schemes. The nature of the review/investigation is not recorded in a manner that allows for the separate breakdown of the savings to be reported. I have set out the savings reported for each scheme in 2016 in the following table.

Table - Savings recorded by social welfare scheme 2016

I hope this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.