DELIBERATE fraudulent unemployment claims are "probably close enough" to 11 per cent of the total, the Minister for Social Welfare said yesterday.

Mr De Rossa was addressing a meeting of the Oireachtas Select Committee on Social Affairs, called to discuss the recently published CSO survey of unemployment figures.

Responding to questions about what steps he was taking to reduce fraud, Mr De Rossa said that, "to a significant extent, there are no new initiatives you can take. The best you can do is ensure it is being done better."

The Minister said there was likely to be "some element of fraudulent claiming" among the 28 per cent of the cases examined who were found not to be living at the addresses they had given when claiming unemployment benefits.

Of those registrants found, 11 per cent indicated they had full time employment. "11 per cent is probably close enough to the level of deliberate abuse of the system.

Mr De Rossa said staff who had been working on implementing the EU equality directive would now be assigned to boosting the Department's fraud control effort.

The vast number of cases of overpayments discovered were not brought to court "because it would be cruel and unkind to do so".

"What we are concerned about are people who are deliberately going about earning good money and then every week going down to their post office and signing on," be said.

In response to the former minister for social welfare, Dr Michael Woods, he said he would "certainly look very hard at the reality of the CSO study". A lot of "ridiculous things" had been said since the controversy had begun.

Mr Jim Kemmy said "people at the top of society" had to take some part of the blame for social welfare fraud.