Welfare clampdown nets €228m

A GOVERNMENT crackdown on welfare fraud has yielded more than €228 million in savings so far this year and has prompted a major surge in the number of reports of suspected fraud by members of the public.

New figures from the Department of Social and Family Affairs reveal that over the first six months of this year around 328,000 individual social welfare claims were reviewed and more than 2,500 reports of suspected welfare fraud by members of the public were investigated.

This compared to just 362 reports in the same period last year.