The State has recovered more than €400 million from people receiving welfare benefits they are not entitled to, according to Minister for Social and Family Affairs Seamus Brennan.
He said the department made 900,000 electronic payments a week and "we must keep a tight grip to minimise whatever small proportion of them that goes to those not entitled to them. In the event of fraud, we must take an uncompromising view."
Fine Gael spokesman David Stanton questioned why "so many people seem to receive payments to which they are not entitled". He pointed out that in 2004, almost 196,000 customers paid through electronic funds transfer received mailshots from Mr Brennan's department. "Six thousand of those letters were returned and more than 1,000 claimants' claims were terminated."
The Minister said that "people sometimes retain payments to which they have lost entitlement owing to increased income and so on. They are required to notify the department of such information and sometimes they fail to do so. We recovered in excess of €400 million from our different checks, balances, surveys and control measures to ensure that nobody receives funds to which he or she is not entitled."
