Covid-19 welfare fraudsters must face criminal sanction

ACCORDING to one estimate, the Government will have to borrow an extra €50bn over the next two years because of the Covid-19 catastrophe. This money will have to be paid back with interest. There are fears the crisis could result in up to 300,000 long-term job losses. Retail, tourism and hospitality all face devastation.

The Government can be criticised for the absence of a clear economic strategy. It can’t, however, be criticised for failing to react quickly to support people’s incomes.

Ireland’s first case of Covid-19 was confirmed on February 29. The Pandemic Unemployment Scheme – a programme to give people who became unemployed due to the virus an income support – was launched on March 16. It seems, however, that due to the speed of introduction, full vetting of all applicants was not possible and the scheme was easy to exploit.

According to the Department of Social Protection’s own figures, at least 98,000 payments had to be withheld. Some of these will have been for honest failures to supply proper documentation or details. But many will have been due to fraudulent applications. Tens of thousands of people decided it was right and proper to take €350 a week from their neighbours’ pockets during a major health and economic emergency just because they could.

In normal times, welfare fraud is despicable. In the current emergency, it approaches treason. During the lockdown, there have been immense displays of courage, community spirit and civic responsibility. The public has responded with equanimity and common sense to the limits placed on its freedoms and the chokehold placed on its financial future. And yet we have to face the dispiriting reality that a substantial cohort of dishonest mé féiners are willing to swindle precious funds from the State.

The department can be criticised for implementing a system that handed out money with too few checks. At least, however, it is now attempting to rectify that by withholding suspect payments.

And it is to the department’s credit that when asked about fraudulent payments by this newspaper, it supplied a substantive answer.

More must be done, however, than merely stopping payments. Every fraudulent applicant must be pursued by the State not only to recover the money, but also so that those who would pick our pockets when we are at our most vulnerable can face serious criminal sanction.

The country will pay its debts, with interest. Those who would rob us at this time of need must be made do the same.

At times of stress or worry we all know that a joke can release tension. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, however, should know better than to try to be funny about claims that a hospital failed to properly report the number of cases of Covid-19. Instead, he made a weak pun about an investigation into the ‘Mater’ [matter].

Even less funny was the failure of Dr Tony Holohan to provide full details on the incident. On Thursday night, the public was given incomplete information that didn’t include the name of the hospital, among other issues. It was only the following afternoon that we learned, from the hospital itself, that proper contact tracing had, in fact, taken place.

This reassurance could have been provided the night before if our medical authorities weren’t wedded to a policy of opacity and news management that backfires every single time.

The information comes out anyway, but only after people are left to needlessly worry.

Who is the joke on?