The Department has abroad-ranging and comprehensive control strategy which aims to keep fraud and abuse to a minimum. Social welfare fraud undermines public confidence in the entire system as well as being unfair to other recipients of social welfare payments, taxpayers and business run on a legitimate basis. The effectiveness of control policies and activities are measured on an on-going basis by a range of performance indicators, including fraud and error surveys, number of reviews, number of employer inspections, number and amount of overpayments assessed and recovered, amount of control savings recorded and the number of prosecutions. Consequently, the number of prosecutions is only one of the indicators used.
The Deputy will appreciate that it would not be practical or cost-beneficial to prosecute every case of suspected welfare fraud. Generally, it is the more serious types of cases, with overpayments at the higher end of the scale, that are selected for prosecution proceedings. In the case of the Department's criminal prosecutions, it is the offence committed — rather than the debt owed — that is the subject of the proceedings. The recovery of the debt is a separate matter for the Department and is not dealt with in the context of the criminal proceedings.
In 2010, the Department recovered €34.5m from outstanding debt. The figure of 253 criminal cases referred to by the Deputy includes 246 scheme cases and 7 employer cases. The figure does not, however, include any cases finalised in court under the Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act 2001. In respect of the 246 scheme cases, 238 individuals have paid back in excess of €770,000 as at 31 December 2011. It should be borne in mind that social welfare debt can be repaid by a single lump sum, regular instalments or by deduction from current entitlements. It is not intended to have a press conference to highlight the number of criminal prosecutions taken by the Department.
