THE Department of Social Welfare has denied claims that a new directive has been issued to its officers to go "soft on cheats found to be abusing the system"
The Fianna Fail spokesman on law reform, Mr Willie O'Dea, said yesterday that sources in the Department had informed him of a directive based on legal advice on how to deduct repayments from people claiming social welfare benefits to which they were not entitled.
"The directive was given in verbal form at training sessions for social welfare officers. Basically the directive says that the interests of natural justice dictate that the Department is restricted in the amount they can compel cheats to pay back weekly," Mr O'Dea said.
But responding to his comments, a spokeswoman for the Department said that the measures to which he referred had been introduced by his own party colleague, Dr Michael Woods, when he was minister for social welfare.
"It involved the code of practice applied in the recovery of payments. The procedures were put on a legal footing in the 1993 Social Welfare Act and are not new. The Department takes account of the circumstances of individual in question and if it appears that the person is not making satisfactory efforts 10 meet the repayments, he or she can be taken to court," the spokeswoman said.
It had been practice for several years that, after repayment deductions, claimants were left with no less than the short term rate of unemployment assistance which amounted to £62.50 a week for a single person. The long term rate was £64.50.
Mr O'Dea had suggested that if a person in receipt of long term unemployment assistance was found to have defrauded the taxpayer of £40,000, the most that could be retrieved by the Department was £2 per week.
"And this arises out of a directive from the Minister. So it would take 400 years to repay what he defrauded. We have to ask ourselves, is this really fair to the taxpayer?"
The spokeswoman insisted that a totally wrong impression" had been given by Mr O'Dea's claims, adding that the procedures for recouping payments had been put in place by Dr Woods.