Taxpayers’ €90m benefits bill for overseas children

IRELAND is set to give more than €90 million a year in child benefits to EU nationals whose dependants live abroad — despite one in five claims being rejected as bogus.

The Department of Social and Family Affairs is trying to cope with more than 20,000 applications for the payments, but 4,000 of these are expected to be eventually denied.

New figures reveal claims have spiralled from 30 a week in 2005 to more than 450 per week in the first four months of this year.

About 80% of the claims being processed are believed to be for children residing in Poland.

An EU convention from 30 years ago means employees from any member state can claim children’s allowance in the country they work in for non-resident children.

Fine Gael has demanded an urgent change in the law to ensure that the additional 1,000 in early childcare supplement (ECS) for children under six is only eligible for use in Ireland.

The Government estimates ECS payments could total €20m for 2007.

Fine Gael family affairs spokesman David Stanton said the true figure could reach €30m.

With about 16,000 of existing claims for children’s allowance likely to be accepted and each family averaging 2.3 children, payments of about €1,920 per year per EU child living overseas would total some €70.6m for 2007.

The cost of children’s allowance and ECS payments combined would amount to more than 90m.

The Government has been deluged with applications since the €1,000 a year early childcare supplement was unveiled in the December 2005 Budget.