THE Dail Committee on Public Accounts is to ask the Secretary of the Department of Social Welfare to explain the difference between his Department's estimate of fraud and the 30 per cent figure found in a survey of those on the live register.
Committee members questioned the low level of fraud, as reported to them on a number of occasions, by the Department and the level of fraud indicated in the report of a survey undertaken by the Department of Social Welfare and the Central Statistics Office.
The report, to be published today, was said to show that 30 per cent of those on the live register were either not at the addresses indicated when they claimed social welfare or were working full time.
The committee also wants the Comptroller and Auditor General to view the survey and report to it.
Labour's Mr Tommy Broughan said yesterday that for years the committee had been told there, was only a very small problem with fraud.
This was a major fraud, on a par with frauds in the beef industry. The cost was such that it could have given an extra £10 to every pensioner, he said.
Mr Michael Finucane (FG) said TDs were being told of fraud in their constituencies for years, but never did anyone think it was on this level.
Mr Ned O'Keeffe (FF) said there was no evidence to suggest that things were as bad as the Minister was suggesting. This was an attack on the unskilled and the semi skilled. It was wrong to suggest, as the Minister for Social Welfare, Mr De Rossa, had done, that there had been collusion between employers and social welfare recipients. There was social welfare fraud, he said, it was among "new age travellers and travellers", he said.
The Comptroller and Auditor General, Mr John Purcell, told the committee it was always impossible to say if the level of detected fraud was the tip of the iceberg or a substantial amount of the iceberg. He had always been sceptical at the low level of fraud claimed by the Department of Social Welfare.
An audit, he reminded the committee, could not stamp out fraud, or detect it. That could only be done by using client visits. T.he primary, responsibility for policing the social welfare system lay with the Department of Social Welfare, he said.