John Drennan: Elite dolebusters squad to tackle welfare cheats
Minister anxious to stamp out benefit fraud as number receiving handouts shoots up by 670,000
Sunday August 21 2011
As coalition concerns grow over the "sustainability of the current social welfare model'', the Sunday Independent has learnt that plans within the Department of Social Protection to set up a 'Sweeney'-style elite fraud-busting squad are at an advanced stage.
The 'Dolebusters' squad is being established to help tackle growing political angst over the ongoing endemic levels of welfare fraud in a State that has been described by Labour's Ruairi Quinn as being in "economic receivership''.
In the last five years the number of recipients of welfare benefits has shot up by around 670,000.
A scenario where an extra 2,600 people a week are receiving benefit of some kind from the State since 2006 has meant that, in that period, welfare expenditure has increased by €7.3bn.
Significantly, within this period of time, while gross government expenditure on issues such as education has declined, welfare expenditure as a percentage of gross government spending has more than doubled from 16 per cent to 36 per cent.
Since the current Social Protection Minister Joan Burton took office, the department has been working increasingly closely with outside agencies such as the Revenue Commissioners to combat the levels of false claims within the welfare system.
Ms Burton's anxiousness to combat the fraud is informed by the view that the best way to protect the Government's commitment to retain the ongoing basic rate of payment to pensioners and to the unemployed is to secure savings in every other aspect of the department's budget.
Speaking to the Sunday Independent, Ms Burton noted the €20bn scale of the welfare budget meant that "even one per cent of that budget being lost to fraud is €200m'' -- the turnover of a relatively large multinational company.
The development comes amidst growing levels of concern in the Coalition over how to tackle a social welfare budget that is responsible for more than one-third of government spending. As the troika and fellow ministers circle menacingly around the welfare budget, the minister herself is "astonished by the variety and amount of schemes and headings for welfare".
Ms Burton said that "as part of the process of drilling down to find what the department does" she had discovered "50 to 60 schemes".
The minister is also concerned by the exponential increase in the numbers availing of these schemes and said: "when it comes to fuel and electricity the numbers who qualify have increased from 265,000 in 2005 to 390,000 by 2011.".
Ms Burton added that "the man in the street may think all these are pensioners but that is not the case by a long shot" and noted that there were even scenarios where applicants "for household benefits, if they qualified, continued to receive these benefits even if other members of the household secure significant earnings".
And she warned "my intention to preserve basic welfare rates means schemes like these must be reformed if we are to secure that objective".
- JOHN DRENNAN
Originally published in
