Public Accounts Committee: Only about 10 per cent of people claiming disability benefit for lower back pain, investigated as part of a special medical assessment programme by the Department of Social and Family Affairs, were found to be eligible for payments for the condition, the Dáil Public Accounts Committee was told yesterday.
The committee heard that in 2003 the Department of Social and Family Affairs had initiated a targeted approach to managing benefit claims for lower back pain, following a major increase in the number of claimants with the condition the previous year.
As part of a pilot programme 1,532 claimants for disability payment on grounds of lower back pain were called for a medical examination before specially-trained doctors.
The chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, Mr Michael Noonan, said that after details of the special examinations were made known over 900 claimants were "miraculously cured" and ceased claiming benefit.
A further 197 claimants called before the medical assessors never turned up.
Mr Noonan said that of those examined by the Department doctors, only 154 were actually found to be eligible for benefit on grounds of having lower back pain.
A further 127 were found eligible for benefit on other grounds.
Mr Noonan said that of the 1,500 or so claimants called for interview by the medical assessors, around 1,100 "had walked out on the scheme without pursuing their claim".
The Secretary of the Department of Social and Family Affairs, Mr John Hynes, told the committee that a follow-up project in Dublin, Cork and Galway, which centred on a further 2,775 claimants for disability benefit on the basis of lower back pain, had produced similar results in that about 10 per cent were found to be eligible.
Mr Hynes said the medical opinion in relation to lower back pain had changed.
He said that previously the view had been that people with the condition "went to bed and did not work".
He said the medical opinion now was that lower back pain was a condition amenable to early return to work, provided that the level of pain was not severe.
Mr Hynes also told the committee that the Department would be instituting civil proceedings on a more frequent basis in future to try to recover money that was overpaid to claimants.
"Whereas in the past the main focus of over-payment recovery was by deduction from social welfare payments of existing recipients, we are now putting a greater focus on recovery from people who are no longer in the system, for example because they have gone back to work", he said.
Recorded over-payments to claimants increased from €29 million in 2002 to €39 million in 2003.
This rise was largely attributed to the establishment of a special project examining one-parent family payments.
Over €13 million of the over-payments was attributed to fraud or suspected fraud.
Committee members Mr John Curran and Mr Seán Fleming of Fianna Fáil criticised the Department for not working more closely with the Revenue Commissioners, to ensure that claimants on some schemes who were allowed to work did not inadvertently run- up large-scale over-payments.
