Special Investigation Unit generated savings of over €60 million
More than 982,000 individual social welfare claims reviewed

Joan Burton T.D., Minister for Social Protection today (16th February 2012) outlined savings of €645 million which had been achieved across Department of Social Protection schemes through fraud prevention and control measures in 2011. Department of Social Protection officials reviewed some 982,000 individual claims for social welfare payments.

Welcoming the figures, Minister Burton said: “The level of savings achieved by the Department is well in excess of the target of €540 million set at the start of 2011 and it shows our commitment to tackling fraud and abuse of the social welfare system across our broad range of schemes.”

These savings refer to future expenditure that would have been incurred but for this control work.  Without this investigation the Social Welfare Bill would over time increase by this €645m.
Reviews of One Parent Family payments accounted for almost €167 million savings, followed by Pensions savings of almost €142 million and over €92 million through Illness payments.  Savings in Jobseekers claims were over €82 million, with over 222,000 claims reviewed while over 392,000 Child Benefit payment claims were reviewed resulting in savings of almost €88 million.  In addition to these claims, over 3,140 employers underwent PRSI inspections to check their compliance, with 68% found to be fully compliant.

New Fraud Control Plan

In September 2011 Minister Burton launched a new fraud strategy, the Fraud Initiative 2011-2013. This initiative takes a revised and renewed approach to the challenges posed by social welfare fraud. Minister Burton continued: “Ensuring the public have confidence and trust in the Department’s response to combating fraud and abuse in the social welfare system is the key element of the Initiative. The increased amount of savings and reviews achieved within 2011 reflects the targeted approach to combating fraud as set out in the Initiative.

“The Programme for Government commits to a zero tolerance approach to social welfare fraud. A key priority for my Department is to ensure that fraudulent activity within the social welfare system is vigorously prevented and combated. Social welfare fraud undermines public confidence in the entire system as well as being unfair to other recipients of social welfare payments, taxpayers and businesses run on a legitimate basis”.

Special Investigation Unit
The role of the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) is to investigate and report on fraud in the various Social Welfare assistance and insurance schemes.  The work of SIU involves the detection and investigation of suspected social welfare fraud and working with Revenue on operations aimed at tackling fraud and combating the Shadow Economy

·        In 2011, the Unit devoted its resources towards planned and systematic control activity and projects.
·        The Unit generated fraud control savings of over €60 million in 2011.
·        The emphasis was on direct intervention via home & site/employer visits and face to face interviews with customers. In particular high visibility activity and with   direct engagement.
·        The Hidden Economy remained a key priority during 2011.

·         Over 30,000 fraud investigations or enquiries were completed.

·        A total of 750 employer inspections were undertaken.

·        A total of 270 cases were referred by the unit for consideration of prosecution for fraud offences under the Social Welfare Act.

·        174 cases were referred to An Garda Síochana for prosecution under the Criminal Justice (Theft & Fraud Offences) Act.
·        The concentration of investigations was on those schemes and sectors where the incidence of social welfare fraud is most pronounced. The focus of investigations was based on risk assessment and appropriate use of resources.
·        In the case of special projects such as non residency and multiple claiming these have been particularly successful.
·        There is also a very active multi agency and joined up agency approach to some of the more specialised activities.

Reporting possible fraud
The Department of Social Protection accepts reports of possible fraud offered by members of the public in relation to the Department’s schemes. Members of the public are asked to provide as much detail about the case they are reporting as possible and they can do so anonymously.

In 2011, 16,920 reports were dealt with in the Central Control Section of the Department, compared with 12,640 in the previous year.

There is a noted increase in anonymous reports of suspected abuse of the social welfare system, being reported by members of the public, the figures have trebled since 2009:
-           2009 6,429
-          2010, 12,640
-           2011, 16,920
Commenting on these figures, Minister Burton said: “Each and every report made by a member of the public is followed up by the appropriate area to assess if action is necessary”.

Reports can be made in the following ways:
-          On line: –  https://www.welfare.ie/EN/Secure/Pages/ReportSuspectFraud.aspx
-          By phone: Locall 1890 927999, (01) 704 3000, ask for Central Control Section or (071) 9672648.                                                                                                                                       -          By Post:  Central Control Division, Department of Social Protection, Shannon Lodge, Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim.