Man challenges decision to cut off his social welfare

A man who featured in an RTÉ television programme about prostitution has gone to the High Court in a bid to challenge a decision to cut off his social welfare payments.

Ioan Anton, a married father of two, was filmed in a Prime Time Investigates broadcast in Feb 2012, which he says insinuated he was involved in prostitution and brothel keeping.

He said he was shown driving several people who appeared in the programme. Mr Anton denies any involvement in such activities and says his appearance on Prime Time Investigates was entirely innocent.

He has claimed before the High Court that following his appearance in the programme, the social protection minister made a decision to stop paying him his weekly €372 jobseeker’s allowance.

The minister’s decision, he has claimed, is “fundamentally flawed”.

In his High Court proceedings against the minister, Mr Anton, from Romania, wants the court to quash the minister’s decision of Jan 24 last that he is not entitled to jobseeker’s allowance.

In Mar 2012 Mr Anton, of Brega, Hamlet Lane, Balbriggan, Dublin, who has been resident in Ireland since 1998, attended for an interview with officials from the department and from Revenue, which he was told was set up because of his appearance in the programme. At the meeting he denied he was involved in a business for which he was in receipt of monies.

He was subsequently informed his jobseeker’s allowance was being stopped for his failure to disclose his means.

Mr Anton appealed against that decision, but was told last January that it was being disallowed and payment of the allowance stopped in March.

Permission to bring the challenge was granted. The case will come before the court again in June.