Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 2 Oct 1996

Vol. 469 No. 3

Written Answers. - Social Welfare Fund Investigators.

Séamus Hughes

Question:

183 Mr. Hughes asked the Minister for Social Welfare the amount paid by way of salary, subsistence and expenses to Officials in his Department and others involved in the detection of fraud for social welfare payments in the past 12 months; the number of cases per county where fraud has been detected; the amount per county deemed to have been obtained by fraudulent means; the number of individuals involved in these investigations; the salary, travelling expenses and subsistence paid to each individual; and the expenses and salary paid in respect of each county visited. [17193/96]

Minister for Social Welfare (Proinsias De Rossa)

The detection of fraud and abuse of social welfare schemes is an integral part of the work of my Department and all departmental staff involved in the determination and payment of social welfare payments have a responsibility to ensure that procedures to ensure correct payments are applied at all times. There are some 570 staff engaged specifically in the control of fraud and abuse of the various social welfare schemes at local, regional and national level. This includes 383 regional staff and 187 at central level who are engaged in work related to control.

The control activities undertaken by the Department include routine inquiries of claimants in relation to their entitlement to payments, reviews of means and other selective interviews by investigative staff, matching of data from different schemes areas, medical examinations, etc. Information is not available in relation to the numbers of claims, by county, which cease as a result of those different activities. Savings attributed to the various control measures undertaken by the Department during 1995 amounted to some £124.5 million. Of this some £11.6 million can be attributed to fraud which was specifically detected on the part of 10,820 claimants. Savings of £15.3 million derive from PAYE/PRSI underpayments detected as a result of employer inspections. In 1995 some 8,000 employers were visited and compliance was found to be completed in order in four out of five cases.

The total amount paid by way of salary, subsistence and expenses to officials engaged in control activities in 1995 was £9,091,000.

Detailed information on those officers engaged in the detection of fraud in the Regions during 1995 is as follows:

Region	Counties Covered	*No. of Staff	**Total Paid Salary	Total Paid T&S
			£'000	£'000
Dublin North	Dublin (North) and County	42	511	31
Dublin South	Dublin (South) and County Wicklow	49	609	33
Dublin West	Dublin West and County Kildare (part)	39	498	42
North-East	Cavan, Louth, Meath and Monaghan	28	380	42
Southern	Cork and Kerry	59	743	78
South-East	Carlow, Kilkenny, Laois, Wexford, Waterford and Kildare (part)	42	543	78
Mid-West	Limerick, Clare, Galway (part) and Tipperary (part)	35	460	69
Western	Galway, Mayo and Roscommon (part)	33	436	64
North-West	Donegal, Sligo and Roscommon (part)	26	342	63
Midlands	Longford, Laois, Offaly, Westmeath, Roscommon and Galway (part)	31	403	56
			4,925	556

*Includes staff working part-time only on fraud control activity.

**Includes only the relevant portion for staff working part-time on fraud control activity.