Social welfare:The Department of Finance is to be asked to write off €82 million that was overpaid by the Department of Social and Family Affairs to recipients of benefits under various schemes, the latest annual report from the Comptroller and Auditor General, John Purcell, states.
It says the Department of Social and Family Affairs had €149 million in overpayments to welfare and other recipients on its books at the end of last year.
However, a new overpayments and debt management system has been put in place. The department will seek to have some of the money owed to it as a result of overpayments written off.
Overpayments by the department in 2006 amounted to €45 million, the report says, and the department believes about €20 million of this is attributed to fraud or suspected fraud.
A total of 256 criminal prosecutions involving social welfare recipients were brought to court in 2006, the report adds.
Meanwhile, Mr Purcell notes that 570,000 people got child benefit worth €2 billion in respect of 1.1 million children in 2006. Just 372,611 of the claimants were Irish. Some 36,000 were from elsewhere in the EU, 29,000 were classified as non-EU and the remainder were classified as other or unknown.
The report also reveals that the department has conducted a fraud and error survey of child benefit claimants, 500 of them Irish nationals and 500 of them foreign nationals, all randomly selected.
"The results of the survey indicated that the level of fraud was 2.6 per cent among Irish nationals and 14.4 per cent among foreign nationals," the report says.
It adds that the survey indicated an overall fraud level of 1.66 per cent in monetary terms "translating into a potential €31.6 million exposure annually".
It has followed up the survey with a mailshot to all claimants of child benefit with children under six years. It has resulted in payments being terminated in 100 cases and in payments being suspended in another 770 cases.
The report also states that a review of over 4,300 claims for one-parent family payments was conducted by the department between January and May this year, which resulted in payments being terminated in 607 cases and in payments being reduced in 1,612 cases.