Protect genuine claimants from fraudsters

ARE there some chancers making false claims for disability payments, costing the State a small fortune and denying money that could be spent on genuine recipients?

It needs to be stressed that the vast majority of those on a disability allowance payment are genuine and suffering terribly. They deserve care and our sympathy.

However, the numbers claiming a disability payment have certainly shot up in the past few years, and yet there is no clear explanation about where the extra numbers are coming from.

Over the past two decades, the numbers getting the allowance have jumped by 83,000 to 126,000, a rise of 192pc.

Some of the increase in expenditure can be explained by factors such as higher weekly payments.

And some of the rise in the numbers can be explained by demographic change, and changes in what is called disability prevalence.

Some of the rest of the increase is down to young people moving onto the scheme from a different social welfare payment.

But much of the surge in the numbers of recipients represents “unexplained inflows”, according to the assessment carried out by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.

Suffering

However, the suspicion is that a minority of those getting the payments are nothing more than disability cheats, the same people who make false personal injuries claims.

Some go to their GP, make up a tall tale about themselves and some doctors dutifully take down what they are saying and give them a note they then use to make a claim.

The big problem here, and it is identified in the Public Expenditure report, is that the main medical assessment as part of the disability allowance application is carried out by the individual’s personal doctor.

The pity of it is that these people are defrauding the State and effectively taking money from those more worthy of it. More money could be spent on genuine claimants if the try-on merchants were weeded out.

Social Protection Minister Regina Doherty needs to do her utmost to convince us that a portion of taxpayers’ money is not being collected every week by welfare fraudsters.