Campaign group attacks dole payments crackdown

A CAMPAIGN group for the unemployed has criticised the crackdown on electronic dole payments as “using a sledgehammer to crack a nut” and contrary to recent government policy.

Social and Family Affairs Minister Mary Hanafin announced yesterday that people signing on the live register from now will have to collect their weekly benefit payment at a post office instead of having it paid automatically to their bank account. The move is being made in an attempt to prevent people from claiming benefits while living and working abroad.

Investigations carried out by the Department of Social and Family Affairs since last September revealed that almost 10% of a sample of 2,048 who were being paid through their bank accounts were found not to be resident in the state when claiming benefits, or claiming too much.

Savings of more than €1.5 million were made as a result of stopping those monitored claims.

However, the Irish National Organisation for the Unemployed (INOU) said that the department should be using its anti-fraud personnel and processes to control benefit cheating rather than stopping people from receiving payments via their bank accounts.

“We feel it would be better to use their control measures and anti-fraud measures to crack down rather than getting everyone to sign on at the post office,” said INOU senior policy officer Bríd O’Brien.

She said the changeover would be particularly difficult for people who had been working and were used to getting their money paid directly into the bank.

“It strikes us that they identified an issue they needed to address and rather dramatically responded to that.”

The move could cause difficulties for people on the dole who get sick and cannot collect their payment, or are away on the day the payment is due.

According to the department, if the payment is not collected by the person within the week, it is cancelled and the individual must then go to their local Social Welfare Office to have it reinstated.

“It’s running contrary to what appears to have been department policy in recent years, which was to encourage as many people as possible to go the electronic route,” said Ms O’Brien.

The department said yesterday that €511m is being targeted in welfare savings this year, through fraud and control measures.

Ms Hanafin described the practice of leaving Ireland, but continuing to sign on once a month, as “an abuse of our welfare system” that threatened the public finances at a time when all budgets are under pressure.

“Ensuring that all new claimants collect their payment in person through their local post office each week should have the effect of minimising the risk of abuse and overpayment of benefits,” she said.