Compulsory ID cards urged to counteract benefit fraud

COMPULSORY national ID cards must be introduced to claw back more than €600 million a year being lost to benefit fraudsters.

An all-party report said the Government was failing to crack down hard enough on benefit cheats.

New measures needed include making it compulsory to name fathers on birth certificates, according to the Oireachtas Social and Family Affairs Committee. This would make it easier to track “deadbeat dads” and force them to pay maintenance, the TDs said.

Lone parent and job seekers’ payments are the biggest areas of benefit fraud, according to Labour spokeswoman on social and family affairs and committee member Roisín Shortall. However, Ms Shortall denied the committee was pandering to knee-jerk stereotypes by demanding an end to EU residents living here being able to claim child benefit for offspring who reside outside the Republic.

Ms Shortall said the practice was costing the state €20m a year and a recent report by the Financial and Comptroller General had estimated fraud accounted for one in seven claims.

Irish parents living in other EU countries can also take advantage of the scheme whereby the host country pays the monetary difference between children’s allowance in the country of residence and the country of origin regardless of whether the child remains abroad or not.

Ireland benefits to the tune of billions of euro a year via similar schemes involving medical costs and pension payments.

The number of claims being made for children residing in other EU countries has increased from 806 in 2004 to 11,517 last year.

Ms Shortall said the €166 a month in child benefit in Ireland was: “an absolute fortune in a less developed country”.

Immigrant rights’ groups criticised the report’s recommendation saying that it reinforced myths regarding “benefit scrounging” regarding workers in Ireland from abroad.

The committee was unable to provide a cost for the scheme, despite Britain recently abandoning decade-long plans to bring in such a system as the measure had proved a logistical nightmare with the estimated cost spiralling above €20bn.

Concerns regarding civil liberties also played a role in the British U-turn.

Social and Family Affairs Minister Mary Hanafin welcomed the report and pledged to use it to help bring down fraud levels in the system. Her department saved €476m in a crackdown on benefit cheats last year, but the Oireachtas committee warned the real level of the problem is at least €600m and with the welfare budget rising to €22bn next year due to the depth of the slump, urgent action was needed to target resources at those genuinely in need.