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Social Protection Minister, Joan Burton announces new powers to crack down on Social Welfare fraud

Social Protection Minister, Joan Burton TD, today announced the new powers she is proposing to give to Social Welfare inspectors to help in the prevention and detection of fraud.

The new powers will enable Social Welfare inspectors to detect and combat social welfare fraud and abuse at ports and airports, to make inquiries of landlords and to require identity checks for social welfare claims.

Minister Burton said:

Social welfare fraud is often perceived as a victimless crime but I am conscious that it undermines public confidence in the entire system as well as being unfair to other recipients of social welfare payments and to taxpayers. It is against this back-drop that I am giving new powers to Social Welfare inspectors.

Almost 95,000 people receive rent supplement at a cost of €503 million last year and a forecast €437 million this year. While existing powers allow for the general investigation of Rent Supplement claims - this does not include any specific power of enquiry to a landlord of premises where a Rent Supplement is being paid, so as to ensure that the supplement is being correctly paid.

I am proposing a new power of enquiry to landlords by Social Welfare inspectors to ensure that Rent Supplement is being correctly paid

the Minister said.

Minister Burton also announced plans to give Social Welfare inspectors new powers regarding enquiry at ports and airports.

Under Social Welfare legislation a condition of entitlement is that people in receipt of certain payments must be living here.

Of this measure the Minister said:

Some people are entering the jurisdiction solely for the purposes of continuing to claim social welfare payments to which they are not entitled. In the last two years, 1,400 people were found not to be resident and continuing to claim social welfare payments. The detection resulted in Exchequer savings of €13 million. These new powers would be of particular use in tackling this type of social welfare fraud.

The Department has commenced the phased introduction of the new Public Services Card (PSC). The card will act as a key for access to public services in general and for identifying and authenticating individuals.

Read the full press release here.