McDowell vows to target immigrants who abuse benefits

IMMIGRANTS abusing state relief will be weeded out, Justice Minister Michael McDowell pledged yesterday.

The Tánaiste was speaking in the wake of new information which revealed a raft of cases where immigrants had falsely claimed thousands of euro worth of benefits like rent relief or social welfare while living in another country.

“I have been aware of other ones (cases) where people have double identities here and in the United Kingdom and people have refugee accommodation here and they were getting rent allowance here by sub-letting their house and working in England. I am aware of cases like that,” the minister said.

The welfare and benefit scams were uncovered as part of Operation Gull.

It was set up to investigate the use of the common travel area between Ireland, Britain and Northern Ireland for illegal immigration and criminality.

The fraud schemes were discovered by welfare officials with the Department of Social and Family Affairs working together with the Garda National Immigration Bureau.

Investigators claim significant numbers of foreign nationals have taken advantage of the common travel area between the Republic and Britain in a bid to defraud the Irish Exchequer. Their benefits are paid into bank accounts, while they were out of the state and the claimants then accessed the monies through ATM machines while abroad.

Scams included one foreign national woman living in Co Meath who was claiming rent allowance and child-related benefits of up to nearly €3,000 per month.

However, her husband was allegedly working as a fully-qualified doctor in a Belfast hospital.

Since the operation was established in 2005, officers have staked out airports and ports.

Mr McDowell said planned legislation and speedier work by immigrant services meant the serious fraud would be rooted out.

“One of the things I’m very keen to do is to ensure that in future we come to very quick decisions about asylum seeking.

“For priority countries, the turnaround for application for asylum status to a final position is now a matter of weeks. So the potential for fraud at this time is being rapidly diminished,” he said.