Sir, - The past week has seen the issue of social welfare fraud grab nearly all the headlines in our national news media. As a PAYE worker, it would be very easy to jump on the newest moral high ground bandwagon and join in the chorus of condemnation of social welfare fraud.
However, unlike our politicians and some journalists, I am well aware that such fraud has been going on for decades. I also realise that there are in many cases justifiable reasons, based on the injustices of the social welfare system, why fraud is undertaken.
I know young people who claim social welfare at addresses at which they don't reside in, simply because if they lived at home they wouldn't get any social welfare from the State. If they lived in the rented accommodation they claimed to reside in, the paltry payments they would receive would leave them with a qualify of life unacceptable in today's society. I for one do not blame them; rather I blame a system that doesn't recognise a young person's right to be recognised as an independent adult while still living at home.
I also know of people who claim the dole and go to work. They do so in fear of the law and the consequences of their actions - but they are forced to do so out of necessity. Many people have to go to work to get that extra £40 or £50 a week, doing menial jobs that nobody else wants, so that their families can have the bare necessities which the rest of us take for granted. This isn't a case of greed, rather a desperate attempt by people caught in a bureaucratic trap to do the best they can for their families.
We live in a society which has seen the difference between the Haves and the Have nots grow wider and wider. I believe in free enterprise and entrepreneurship, but I also believe in spreading the wealth of the nation more equally between all the people - something our politicians and successive Governments seem to have forgotten about. There are undoubtedly people who defraud social welfare because of greed; there are also people who are termed as defrauding social welfare, but do so out of necessity, not greed.
Not one person has ever been successfully prosecuted for tax evasion in this country, and, I'm waiting to see our politicians and journalists running their banner headlines of astonishment and incredulity at this fact in the coming weeks. They'll probably follow this up with "business and farming fraud" headlines: perhaps even an outburst of shock at the lack of prosecutions following the Beef Tribunal, or the millions handed out afterwards.
Of course, the final piece of political and journalistic revulsion would be the astounding news: "No Fraud by PAYE". Then we'd all realise that our political leaders have finally caught up with the rest of us in the real world. - Yours, etc.,
Murmont Circle,
Montenotte,
Cork.