PEOPLE RECEIVING social welfare may have their bank accounts monitored for suspicious transactions in an attempt to detect welfare fraud, Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton has said.
Ms Burton told an Oireachtas committee yesterday a similar bank account monitoring system was in force in Australia and she was studying it to see if it could be introduced in Ireland.
“If there are large transactions, which there could be in some cases, going through bank accounts . . . maybe somebody should look at these transactions,” said Ms Burton, who has already held talks with Australian officials about the anti-fraud measure.
The proposal to monitor the bank accounts of welfare recipients is one of several measures being considered as part of a plan to tackle welfare fraud, which will be launched in September.
Last year the Department of Social Protection achieved welfare fraud control savings of €483 million, which was short of its target of €533 million in control savings.
Ms Burton said she would adopt a “zero tolerance approach” to welfare fraud, and would like to create the equivalent of a “welfare fraud squad”.
She said details of the anti-fraud plan would be finalised in coming weeks, but revealed that it would place an emphasis on increasing home visits by investigators and face-to-face interviews of people suspected of fraud.
Ms Burton said the huge increase in social welfare applications in recent years forced inspectors to become engaged in more paperwork. Her goal was to free them from their desks to go out and do more inspections.
“It is important that inspectors do go out and revisit and make connections, so there is knowledge in the community that people who are defrauding social welfare won’t get a free ride and free passage on the backs of people working.”
Some committee members raised concerns about foreign nationals, who are no longer living in the country, returning through Dublin airport once a month to claim welfare benefits. They also expressed concern about recent news that there are 2.62 million more personal public service numbers in circulation than there are people in the country.
Ms Burton said the department was reviewing the information on the numbers, which are required for people to claim social welfare or work.
Any move to monitor bank accounts of private individuals is certain to raise concerns about privacy and could fall foul of data protection legislation. However, department officials say these concerns could be addressed by legislation and point to existing monitoring and reporting powers in money laundering and anti-terrorist legislation.