Suspected identity fraud cases ‘11 times higher’, says Varadkar

Minister for Social Protection Leo Varadkar has said his department underestimated the level of suspected identity fraud and it was "11 times higher than the figure we incorrectly gave".

The department had said there had been one case of suspected identity fraud but Mr Varadkar on Wednesday said there were 11 cases.

The Minister said there were 46 last year, 54 the year before and 29 the year before that, “which gives a total of 140 in the past 3½ years”.

He said identity fraud was one of the less common forms of fraud and was “much less common than working and claiming”.

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He was responding to Fianna Fáil social protection spokesman Willie O’Dea who said he was “somewhat confused” about what the Minister’s anti-fraud campaign sought to achieve. Referring to the Minister’s figure of €506 million as the total value of control and anti-fraud savings last year, Mr O’Dea said Mr Varadkar had previously told him the figure attributable to pure fraud was €41 million out of the €506 million.

Mr Varadkar said the €506 million figure was the outcome of nearly 950,000 reviews and investigations undertaken by his officials across the board of schemes and programmes. He said the nature of the scheme was taken into account, whether it was short-term such as jobseeker’s benefit or long-term such as the State pension.

Mr O’Dea expressed concern about the publication of a list of convicted offenders every three months and asked “what is there to prevent others from using the list and consistently publishing and republishing it”.

The Minister said the intention was to publish the list after convictions were secured. It would not appear in perpetuity but would be taken down after a period. The Social Protection committee will discuss the heads of a Bill on the issue on Friday.