SOCIAL WELFARE:THE DEPARTMENT of Social Protection recorded welfare overpayments of €83.4 million last year, with as much as 31 per cent of this classified as fraud, according to the Comptroller Auditor General's annual report.
The level of recorded overpayments is up 65 per cent since 2007. Over the same period, overall social welfare expenditure has risen by 30 per cent.
Between 2007 and 2010, the value of fraud-related overpayments recorded each year fluctuated between €21 million and €26 million. Last year €26 million, or 31 per cent, of all overpayments recorded were classified as fraud.
From 2007 to the end of December 2010, just 25 per cent of overpayments recorded had been recovered, the report reveals. During that period, the total value of overpayments due for recovery increased from €211 million to €315 million.
Last year, over half of all recoveries made were through deduction from welfare payments. The balance was obtained either through direct payments from claimants or from the estates of deceased claimants.
The aggregate value of overpayments recovered by the Department in 2010 was €34.5 million. Of this, €19.7 million was collected through deductions from payments to which claimants were currently entitled.
A further €7.2 million was recovered through direct payments of non-contributory State pension overpayments, while €7.6 million was recovered by way of direct payments from claimants.
The report shows that almost 62,000 cases of suspected fraud have been identified for further investigation. The cases, which were uncovered through cross-checking with other State departments and agencies include 25,000 recipients of jobseeker’s allowance and 12,000 recipients of supplementary welfare allowance who had gone back to work.
Approximately 13,300 recipients of one-parent family payments were also found to be working, while 26,372 students were identified as being on welfare schemes.
There were also 13,176 claimants identified from cases notified by the Commission for Taxi Regulation and 2,735 landlords identified by the Private Residential Tenancies Board.
Over the period 2007 to 2010, about 6 per cent of overpayment debts were written off. Write-offs of debts last year totalled €8.5 million. In addition, 1.3 per cent of overpayments were cancelled following appeals.
The department said its ability to recover overpayment debts through benefit reductions was “limited”. It said that since the current weekly rate for supplementary welfare allowance was just €2 below most welfare payments, in many cases this was the most that could be recovered.
Overall, between 2 per cent and 3 per cent of cases classified as fraud are referred for prosecution, with most of these focused on cases involving high value overpayments.
The report shows that the number of criminal prosecutions against welfare payment recipients finalised in court increased between 2007 and 2009. However, it dropped by 29 per cent last year to just 246 prosecutions.
Referring to the small number of cases taken over deception, the accounting officer said it was neither practical nor cost-beneficial to prosecute every case of suspected fraud. Almost two-thirds of the cases decided last year resulted in fines being imposed. The average fine was just over €875.
In addition to proceedings against welfare recipients, seven employer-related cases were finalised in 2010, the report shows. One of those convicted received a prison sentence while in four other cases, fines averaging just under €1,040 each were imposed. The two other cases were struck out.
