Perspective please

The annual report from the Comptroller and Auditor General is usually an occasion for indignation and how-dare-they high dudgeon.

The figures involved are often spectacular and provoke charges of carelessness and a lack of responsibility that are often as colourful as they are inaccurate and misplaced.

This year is no different. The most eye-catching figure is the €100m bill for fraud and error around the jobseekers allowance — or €2.68m per week. Each week in the period under review, around 300,000 people collected this payment. A total of 1,000 jobseekers cases were investigated and 85% were deemed satisfactory. Customer error was found in 119 cases, departmental error in nine cases and fraud in just 21 cases — or just over 2%.

It is hard not to think that any enterprise involving the expenditure of €100m a year to 300,000 individuals would not record pretty similar ratios. Under another heading — rent supplement — the State paid out €373m in rent supplement last year to 80,000 recipients — or, more accurately, their landlords. Once again, a thousand cases were examined and a net fraud or error rate of 5% was found. This compares favourably with 5.8% in the UK. In an ideal world, there would be no fraud, no official or customer errors and no waste of funds, but we do not live in an ideal world. It is fair to say that the black economy and white-collar crime siphon off far greater sums from our economy that welfare fraud or error. Though everything possible should be done to minimise this, a bit of honesty and perspective would be appropriate too.