Micheál Martin
Ceist:6Deputy Micheál Martin asked the Minister for Social Protection her plans for control savings this year; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [20561/12]
Amharc ar fhreagraWednesday, 25 April 2012
Ceisteanna (5)
Freagraí ó Béal (9 píosaí cainte)
The Department's control savings target for 2012 is €645 million with an associated target of reviewing 985,000 individual welfare claims. Control savings are a valuable performance indicator for the Department of year-on-year control activities and this year's targets will be kept under review during the coming months. It is important to point out that control savings are not actual moneys recovered by the Department, but an estimate of the value of the various control activities across the Department's schemes. They represent an estimate of the value of prevented future social welfare expenditure on claims that would have been incurred if this control work had not been conducted. They do not include any case where the customer voluntarily told the Department of a change in means or circumstances, leading to an adjustment to his or her rate of payment.
Actual moneys recovered arise where the Department has raised an overpayment in an individual case. In 2010, a total of 51,950 overpayments were assessed on scheme cases, amounting to €83.4 million. This represented 0.41% of total departmental expenditure. Overpayments arising from activity suspected of being fraudulent amounted to €25.9 million, representing less than 0.1% of total expenditure. The overpayments figures for 2011 will not be available until they are audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General.
This morning, Deputy Sean Fleming and I discussed various additional targeted fraud initiatives, including the initiative that I launched for the 2011-13 period. It will target specific high risk areas through the work of the special investigations unit.
Additional Information not given on the floor of the House.
The Deputy may be familiar with the Department's 2011-13 fraud initiative, which sets out a range of actions to combat fraud and abuse of the social welfare system and to ensure public confidence and trust in the system. These actions will be reviewed periodically and updated, as required, given emerging trends. The consequences for social welfare fraud can be severe. Prosecutions may be taken against persons who defraud the social welfare system and employers who fail to carry out their statutory obligations. A person found guilty of abusing the social welfare system may be fined or imprisoned.
I am conscious of the need to protect public money and I am determined to ensure that abuse of the system is prevented or, where detected, dealt with effectively. With this in mind, I propose to give social welfare inspectors increased powers via the Social Welfare and Pensions Bill 2012, which is before the Oireachtas. The proposed new powers will enable inspectors to detect and combat social welfare fraud at ports and airports, make inquiries of landlords and require identity checks for social welfare claims.
I thank the Minister for her information and I am pleased by her confirmation that what is often referred to as a control saving as a result of fraud is not actually cash saved, but is instead a notional saving in a future year. Will the Minister identify some of the high risk areas in question? We discussed some of them this morning, including the 1,400 people at the ports and so on. Through publicity, any person who is chancing his or her arm in a particular area might know that those areas will be closely monitored.
I submitted a parliamentary question, but the Minister did not have the information with her. She might have it now. If a one-parent family is struck off because the parent is cohabiting, that person could immediately move on to jobseeker's allowance or become an adult dependant under someone else's claim. The Department would count the savings from removing that person from one set of payments, yet he or she might have moved into a different category of payment by the next morning. Is there a real saving? Where there is a suspicion of fraud, has the Department a mechanism whereby it can follow up with people to determine whether they have moved on to different payments?
I can cite an example of some of the targeted examinations conducted by social welfare inspectors. Last June, 320 clients were visited, of whom 99 were called for further interview. A total of 43 clients had their payments suspended - 18 for not attending their interviews, 16 for no longer being at the addresses stated and nine for non-compliance with requests to supply information, for instance, rent and mortgage data. This work generated savings of €140,000.
Last April, there was a selective signing initiative at social welfare local offices. A total of 900 persons were required to attend for signing and interviewing in the course of two days and to present photographic ID and documentation. Of the 900 invited, 730 attended. Seventy non-attendees were excused, 36 people had found work, 37 people's claims were closed and 13 persons admitted to working casually or temporarily. This accrued a saving of just over €300,000.
Under the non-residency project, approximately 2,800 people received home visits and were interviewed about their claim status. A total of 308 claims were terminated as a result of the special investigations unit's work, generating savings of €3.24 million. A cleaning company received an on-site inspection to determine whether everyone working for it was registered for tax and insurance. Much of this type of work is done in conjunction with the Revenue Commissioners and is called feet on the street.
I have listened to the debate on control savings, but will the Minister answer two short questions? Does she agree that the figure for fraud is €25 million, approximately 0.1% of the entire budget? Is it correct to state that the figure of €645 million, the latest figure devised by the Minister and her Department, was arrived at through the bizarre logic of assuming a situation in which no controls or inspections were initially in place? As the economist Mr. Michael Taft stated, this is like the Garda estimating the number of murders that might take place were there no police force. The overpayment element of control measures equated to €80 million and fraud accounted for €25 million. It is a long way from the €650 million cited by the Minister.
Is the Deputy saying in a roundabout way that he does not believe there is any fraud in the system?
I said fraud cost €25 million and I called for more inspectors.
The vast majority of people who claim social welfare entitlements are absolutely honest but, to return to the example of the special projects I outlined to Deputy Fleming, if Revenue and social welfare inspectors visited a building site on which somebody from the North of Ireland is working it would not be possible without massive surveillance to determine how long he or she has been there. Generally, one will be told that the individual just started working that day.
That is NERA's job.
We also co-operate with NERA on many of these inter-agency issues. However, we do not have a way of proving that an individual was working at a site for longer than he or she suggests. The saving on the control side comes from preventing that person from claiming in the future because he or she has on examination been discovered to have made an improper claim. There is no capacity in that case to prove fraud. In other cases, people have welcomed that the Department contacted them on, for example, the lone parent allowance because they had paid PRSI previously and they wanted to know that it was being properly spent on pensions, child benefit, etc.
If a recipient is no longer at the address he or she supplied to the Department, Deputy Fleming will be familiar with the basic auditing procedure of writing a letter to determine whether the payment should be discontinued. I am not saying that a significant number of people are acting this way, merely that there is a level of fraud in the system and it is important to implement measures to reduce it. If one is making payments to people which are no longer appropriate because of fraud or any other reason, one saves on future expenditure by discontinuing them. That is an internationally accepted measure.