Errors add up to €36m in overpayments by social welfare

Suspected fraud accounted for almost €41m of overpayments which were recovered from some 20,720 welfare recipients by the Department of Social Protection in 2012.

But another €36m was accounted for by customer or third-party errors in the case of almost 41,000 customers, and €12.6m arose from reviews of assets of more than 400 deceased people whose estates were being distributed by solicitors.

Mistakes by the department resulted in known overpayments of €7.7m, bringing the total of over- payments recovered to €97m, representing just under 0.5% of its €2bn-plus budget that year.

While planned computer profiling may lead to changes in how cases are selected for review, comparisons of data with other public and private agencies are among the chief triggers for inquiries at present.

As well as the Revenue Commissioners, information is systematically matched with the Irish Prison Service, third-level colleges, registry offices, Commission on Taxi Regulation, the HSE’s Fair Deal nursing home support scheme, Probate Office, and the UK pensions department.

The Department of Social Protection also makes ad-hoc checks to the Personal Injuries Assessment Board, Private Residential Tenancies Board, and the Private Security Authority for payments or sources of income.

Most cases of fraud arise on foot of false declarations by customers about their employment, income or family status, including people working and claiming a welfare payment, living with a partner and claiming the one-parent family payment, living abroad, or an employer not paying PRSI.

Other types of fraud include non-declaration of means such as earnings, savings, investments, maintenance or compensation, claiming benefit for a person who is dead or in prison, and suspected identity fraud where someone uses another person’s identity or a false identity to claim a social welfare payment.

From random social welfare surveys of various payment schemes, one of the highest levels of fraud was the 2.3% of spending on one-parent family payments which related to fraud.

But errors can account for more significant costs in many schemes with, for example, 3.1% of spending on Jobseekers Allowance found to be paid in error — more than double the cost of fraud. And fraud was suspected in just 0.1% of Jobseekers Benefit spending, compared to 1.5% paid in error.

Gardaí will have power to probe social welfare fraud 

Gardaí should begin working with welfare officials within weeks to help detect and investigate benefits cheats.

While officers have worked for a number of years alongside Department of Social Protection staff at airports, ports and traffic checkpoints, they will have more investigative roles in the move approved by Government earlier this year.

The plan was announced in April as part of Social Protection Minister Joan Burton’s anti-fraud strategy. The competition to select 20 members of An Garda Síochána has begun, with legal changes required to allow the moves beyond existing support work.

“While gardaí working with officials from the department have been doing this as part of their normal rostering, those seconded will undertake the full range of investigative duties in detecting and combating social welfare fraud,” a department spokesperson said.

“They will retain their powers as gardaí for the duration of their secondment. They will be appointed with powers under the social welfare acts to enable them to work with officers from the department’s special investigation unit, and will perform all relevant social welfare fraud investigation functions,” she said.

They will be located in Cork, Dublin, Dundalk, Galway, Letterkenny, Limerick, Longford, Monaghan, Navan and Sligo.

A Garda spokesperson said a national competition to select members of the force for secondment has been advertised and is currently ongoing.

“It is envisaged that the results of the interviews will be known by mid-August,” he said.