Varadkar browbeats us all on welfare problems

Leo Varadkar talking about poor people is never a good look, which puts him in a difficult spot considering he is Minister for Social Protection.

Last month, when commenting on expanding community employment (CE) schemes, Varadkar managed to reveal himself in a way that belies those honed communication skills, and take on a tone that isn't unique when it comes to Fine Gael Minister, a tone that is both detached and dismissive, "We're going to protect the number of CE places, really recognising two things: that community employment isn't just about employment activation but also about social inclusion, giving people who, quite frankly, let's be honest, find it difficult to hold down a job and give them something worthwhile to do."

He later apologised on Twitter for a poor choice of words.

But lately, the campaign to bust “welfare cheats”, with the slogan “Welfare cheats cheat us all”, and plans to publish the names and addresses of people convicted of welfare fraud bring this attitude to the fore again.

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There was something brilliant about Independents4Change reacting to the new bus ads with a “Vulture funds cheat us all” poster campaign. “The Minister would make a lot more money going after fraud in big business rather than welfare,” TD Mick Wallace said, “but a potential future taoiseach doesn’t seem to have the same stomach to go after big business”.

Bank bailout

Ireland’s biggest fraud to date was the little oopsie the State made on behalf of the Irish taxpayer in the form of a €64 billion bank bailout. Who do we feel more cheated by? Someone scamming the dole, or government making reckless financial decisions on our behalf? It’s not a false equivalence when the taxpayer is footing that bill week in, week out for the rest of their lives.

`Welfare cheats' is an emotive term, the type of thing the Daily Mail froths over because it's another way of attacking people already demeaned in society: poor people, immigrants, single mothers, etc

"Welfare cheats" is an emotive term, the type of thing the Daily Mail froths over because it's another way of attacking people already demeaned in society: poor people, immigrants, single mothers, etc.

Ireland’s largest known social welfare fraud case saw a man jailed in February for three years with nine months suspended. Over the course of 16 years, the man received €280,000 in social welfare payments fraudulently by claiming under two names. He was caught thanks to facial-recognition software. A report on RTÉ said he hadn’t “accumulated any of the money but was using it to live on”. Some of the money was spent on his sick mother. He had no money in any bank accounts when arrested, and €20 on his person.

The report said: "He cried throughout the court hearing and the court heard he sobbed throughout his interviews with gardaí." Shame is a terrible thing, isn't it? This man fraudulently drained the State of €17,500 a year for 16 years. By the way, the public already reports welfare fraud quite thoroughly. Twenty thousand cases of social welfare fraud were reported last year by members of the public. That's nearly 55 cases a day. One hundred and sixty of those – 0.8 per cent – were referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Overpayments

One hundred and ten million euro in welfare overpayments were paid in 2016, €41 million of which were “fraud overpayments” in 16,225 cases. A total of €49 million of fraud was discovered in 2015, in 21,407 cases. Varadkar said reviews and investigations across nearly a million welfare recipients last year resulted in “control savings” of €506 million.

It has been widely reported and interpreted that anti-fraud measures saved us €506 million last year, but reviewing a social welfare payment resulting in the State clawing some of that money back is different from people committing fraud.

I have no reason to doubt this figure, but I think it would be useful for everyone if there was a detailed breakdown of what is fraud and what is not (without, let’s say, naming names), because if the largest social welfare fraud case uncovered (according to RTÉ) saw someone siphon €17,500 every year for 16 years, there would need to be 28,571 people doing the same thing last year. Is that happening?

Something that the Department of Social Protection could put some resources into is making sure it's paying out what it's meant to. Let's look at, for example, the backlog in maternity benefit payments: 2,850 claims for maternity benefit await processing; 1,300 of those are from women who have already started maternity leave.

Varadkar has apologised for the delays and has said they’ll continue for a few weeks or so. Deal with it, ladies.

Why is this happening? In a statement issues to thejournal.ie, the reason there is such a backlog is, wait for it, due to "a high turnover of staff in our Buncrana (Co Donegal) office which processes maternity claims". Sorry, what? "We have also experienced challenges in recruiting replacement staff and once recruited it takes time for staff to be fully trained.

“In relation to the operational issues, a new IT system has recently been introduced and has taken time to bed in fully. The new system supports online applications and is working as planned.” It’s not though. Your system is literally not working as planned.

At full whack, maternity benefit – €230 a week for 26 weeks – is €5,980. If 2,850 claims are awaiting process, that’s €17,043,000. That guy who was draining the State of €17,500 a year for 16 years? It would take him 974 years to reach that figure at the rate he was going.

Of course, social welfare fraud is wrong, but there’s a reason the public gets a little bit shirty about strong-arm campaigns against it, because it reinforces the suspicion that consequences in society are for poor people, and fraud and inefficiencies elsewhere just don’t get ads on buses.