The Department of Social Welfare saved almost £160 million last year by checking up on recipients, a 27 per cent increase on the previous year. The total social welfare budget for last year was £4.5 billion.
Almost 500,000 claims for social welfare payments were reviewed. A third of all investigations related to unemployment payments and yielded almost half the savings. Very little money was saved by reviewing people claiming child benefit, pre-retirement allowance, family income supplement and supplementary welfare allowance.
Some £75.36 million was saved from people claiming unemployment payments, according to figures from the Department released yesterday. The bulk of the remainder came from savings in pensions and sickness benefit.
However, much smaller amounts - £3.54 million, £3.32 million and £2.55 million respectively - came from savings in child benefit, pre-retirement allowance and family income supplement (listed together), and supplementary welfare allowance. A total of 108,470 reviews - 20 per cent of the total - of child benefit payments yielded just 2 per cent of the savings.
The Department carried out almost 450,000 reviews of social welfare claims. This resulted in the referral of 245 cases to the Chief State Solicitor's office for prosecution, or less than 0.05 of 1 per cent. However, it was more than double the number referred in 1996.
The breakdown of these cases parallels the pattern of claims denied. More than half of the cases referred (162) concerned people claiming unemployment payments. However, only a third of the reviews carried out were of unemployment payment claims, suggesting that fraudulent claims are more common in this area.
A large proportion of the rest of the savings, £20.76 million, came in short-term disability benefit. The Department's medical assessors examined 72,708 people claiming both long and short-term payments and disallowed claims worth £26.13 million.
The Department also inspected almost 7,000 employers and found that 80 per cent of them were compliant with their obligations to pay PAYE and PRSI for staff. It recouped some £10 million in arrears of PAYE and PRSI from the 20 per cent who were not compliant.
Mr Mike Allen, of the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed, questioned how the savings were calculated. "Is it on the basis that if people are called for interview, and then sign off as unemployed, that what they would have been paid for the rest of the year is counted as savings?"
A spokeswoman for the Department said the calculation was complex but they did take into account those who signed off as a result of an inspection of an industry or a home visit, and the amount they would have been paid was reckoned as a saving.
Mr Allen said that, while the INOU did not condone welfare fraud, it was concerned that some people were cut off from unemployment payments because they were illiterate and did not respond to letters calling them in to social welfare offices. "The Larkin Unemployed Centre is taking a number of appeals on behalf of such people. We would be worried about these people because they are among the most vulnerable."
A Department spokeswoman said they would not have much experience of this as people had to fill in a form to get unemployment payments. Social welfare staff would, therefore, know if a person was unable to write and an officer would call to their home.