A JUDGE has said he had to jail a man as a deterrent to others after he was convicted of claiming more than €19,000 in jobseeker’s allowance when he had both a full-time and part-time job.
Judge Martin Nolan said yesterday it was by “sheer accident” that John Mattins, a father of three, was detected and said it was “usually impossible” to detect this kind of welfare fraud.
“Is there a reason for society’s sake to impose a deterrent sentence?” Judge Nolan asked.
He imposed a one-year sentence.
The court was told that Mattins, who is originally from Nigeria, had started to pay back the money to the State.
He noted that Mattins was “a good family man” but said he had to jail him “to deter others from adopting the course he did”.
Mattins (29), Castleview Walk, Swords, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to making a false statement in relation to jobseeker’s allowance and claiming he was unemployed when he was working in 2006 and 2007.
He also pleaded guilty to an additional charge of failing to notify the authorities of a change in the circumstances of his employment at that time. Mattins had been working full-time with security company, Ashjen and part-time at a number of hospitals with hygiene company, Spring Grove.
Social welfare inspector Anthony Farrell told Gerardine Small, prosecuting, that he had interviewed Mattins in October 2006 as part of a control project, taking his details and noting his employment status.
Two years later he was checking the employment records of Spring Grove and Ashjen when he recognised Mattins’s name in their documents.
He investigated the matter and interviewed Mattins in January 2009.
He admitted that he had been working while claiming the dole and had received €19,137.66 in welfare payments from the State.
Mr Farrell agreed with Patrick Jackson, defending, that Mattins had since started to reimburse the Department of Social Protection and had to date handed over €3,400, through making a weekly payment of €50.
He accepted that Mattins came to Ireland in August 2000 as an asylum seeker but was granted residency in 2005 and started to work shortly afterwards.