THE EXTENT of the cultural shift in reporting suspected welfare fraud will be revealed today when Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton gives a breakdown of the record 17,000 anonymous tip-offs made to the authorities last year.
The increase in members of the public reporting alleged welfare cheating has seen the number of tip-offs given to officials by email, phone and letter rise from 6,429 in 2009 to 12,640 in 2010 and 16,920 last year.
Some 7,430 of the reports made to officials in 2011 were about people who, the informants claimed, were receiving unemployment benefit while continuing to work.
More than 2,000 more tip-offs relating to suspicions about concurrent working and claiming were received last year: the figure was 5,350 in 2010.
Reports relating to alleged breaches of the cohabitation rules for single parents (a claimant must not live with a partner if they claim to live alone) numbered 4,470 last year – a jump of 930 from the 3,540 reported in 2010. Reports relating to employer issues rose from 380 in 2010 to 490 last year.
Ms Burton will outline the savings achieved by her department through targeted fraud control measures. She announced the initiative last September, saying she hoped it would achieve savings of €625 million this year.
Her department’s control division, based in Carrick-on-Shannon in Co Leitrim, has recently added 778 reports made in December to those for the rest of 2011 to give her a breakdown of full-year figures.
In 2005, just 621 anonymous reports were received, indicating that the tolerance for breaches of social welfare payment rules has dropped, perhaps as the effects of the recession continue to be felt.
Ms Burton suggested at the end of last year that the “sharp increase” could be interpreted as a “cultural shift” in Irish attitudes.
Ms Burton will today be joined by Philip Cox from her department’s special investigation unit, who will give an overview of the extent of social welfare fraud.
Fraud and error rates tend to range from 1 per cent in cases involving the State contributory pension to 3.1 per cent with the Jobseeker’s Allowance.
However, a high fraud rate of 12 per cent was discovered recently following an investigation of welfare payments to people suspected of not being resident in the State. Almost 600 such payments were terminated as a consequence of home visits and interviews by departmental inspectors during the first 11 months of last year, saving the exchequer some €6.33 million.
Email is the preferred method of alerting the authorities to alleged offences, with more than 10,000 electronic messages sent in 2011.
All anonymous or confidential reports made to the department are examined. Not all are correct, but in cases that are considered relevant, the information is referred to departmental inspectors for follow-up action.
