Welfare fraud claims 'a huge exaggeration'

The government's claims that €645m was saved by a crackdown on welfare fraud are a huge exaggeration, a leading Cork-born anti-poverty campaigner has claimed.

Social Justice Ireland said it had evidence to show that more than three-quarters of the savings came from correcting errors made by bungling staff in the Department of Social Protection. Dr. Sean Healy, director of Social Justice Ireland, went on to slam the Department for publishing a misleading statement and pointed out that a previous study, 'Tackling Welfare Fraud', which was published last October, had found that just 21.1 per cent of welfare payments were due to fraud.

Cork-born Fr. Healy said: "The most recent study conducted on this issue showed that more than three-quarters of the savings came from correcting errors made by staff in calculating people's entitlements. "There is no justification for misleading statements that present many of Ireland's poorest and most vulnerable people as fraudsters when the facts clearly don't support such a claim."

Michelle Murphy, research and policy analyst with the anti-poverty campaign group, added: "The vast majority of any overpayments in the welfare system are not caused by fraud, but flow from mistakes made by people filling out forms or by the Department's staff who are under huge pressure, as their workload has increased dramatically." The claims follow Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton's announcement yesterday that the level of savings were well above the target of €540m.

According to the Department's latest figures, the number of anonymous tip-offs made to the welfare fraud control division soared to almost 17,000 last year.

The central control section of the Department of Social Protection received 16,920 reports from members of the public last year, an increase of more than 4,000 tip-offs in 2010 and almost 10,000 more than in 2009.

Minister Burton, who said that 982,000 individual benefit claims had been reviewed, added: "It shows our commitment to tackling fraud and abuse of the social welfare system across our broad range of schemes."