The Pensions Board has said it is concerned about administrative shortcomings in pension schemes but has found little evidence of serious fraud as a result of its investigation and monitoring activities.

Of the 196 schemes subjected to random audit by the board last year, only 17 received a fully clean bill of health with the remainder failing to fully comply with requirements such as keeping members informed, updating records or submitting actuarial funding certificates.

"We have found no evidence of serious fraud but quite a lot of late administration and we would like to see that tightened up," said Ms Anne Maher, chief executive of the Pensions Board. "If the good guys are not up to date, it's harder for us to find the bad guys."

She said the current board, which had focused heavily on policy matters in its early years, would be placing a major emphasis on its regulatory role for the remainder of its five-year term which runs to the end of 2000. It plans to review its regulatory procedures to ensure they are as effective and as cost-efficient as possible.

Among the issues the Pensions Board will consider is the possibility of "piggy-backing" on the work of other arms of the State such as the Revenue Commissioners, the use of technology in the regulation process and other forms of penalty aside from the two options currently open to the board. At present, it can either write to offending schemes or prosecute them but has no sanction in between these two extremes.

The Pensions Board said some 11 cases had been referred to it under the "whistle-blowing" legislation introduced in 1996, which places a mandatory requirement on people involved in the operation of pension schemes to report actual or suspected fraud or material misappropriation to the board.