Thousands of dead pensioners paid €18m in benefits

leonidas83

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/thousands-of-dead-pensioners-paid-euro18m-in-benefits-2975364.html

MORE than €18m was paid out in pensions during the past two years to people who were dead, the Irish Independent has learned.
Nearly 10,000 'phantom pensioners' were only discovered when the Department of Social Protection cross-checked its pension payments against the death records held by the General Register Office.

The pension payments were made largely because there is a three-month 'grace period' after a person's death before the next of kin is legally obliged to inform the department so that it can cancel the pension.

But in some cases, relatives or friends deliberately set out to defraud the State by continuing to claim a pension after a death.

In the most extreme cases, pensions had been paid for more than two decades after the person had died.

One of the cases in the past two years concerned a family member who continued to collect the pension for their dead relative for two years, gathering €30,000 in total.

According to figures supplied by the department and the state spending watchdog, there were total "overpayments" of €10.6m in 2009 and at least €7.8m last year.

In total, payments were made in respect of 9,850 dead pensioners over the two years.

The department has legal powers to demand repayment from relatives or friends who have claimed pensions for those who have died.

However, there were no figures available on how much of the €18.4m that was erroneously paid out in the past two years has since been successfully reclaimed.

The department blamed the lack of accurate information on "shortcomings" in its records.

However, it said that more than €7m had been recovered from the estates of dead pensioners in recent years.

The department is now getting immediate notification of deaths from the General Registrar's Office as soon as a person's death is registered. A spokesperson said this would prevent large-scale fraud in the future.

However, families still have up to three months to register a death, which means erroneous payments are likely to continue, at least for short periods of time.

The focus on 'phantom pensioners' has increased following a number of recent high-profile court cases.

Last year, a judge described as "amazing" the ease with which an elderly man had been able to claim a dead friend's pension for 23 years.

Patrick McLoughlin (66), from Ballyfermot in Dublin, was given a three-year suspended sentence after defrauding the State of more than €136,000.

The fraud was only discovered because welfare staff were preparing to make the "presidential centenarian bounty payment" to McLoughlin's deceased friend, Gerry Donnelly, whose 100th birthday would have been in April 2007. Mr Donnelly had died in 1984.

McLoughlin was arrested in June 2007 after gardai viewed CCTV footage of him collecting Mr Donnelly's pension.

An Post, which made the payments, repaid the Department of Social Protection. McLoughlin has committed to repay An Post at the rate of €40 a week.

Separately, it emerged yesterday that there has been a sharp rise in social welfare tip-offs for suspected fraud.

Tip-offs

Anonymous tip-offs to the Department of Social Protection increased from about 600 in 2005 to more than 16,000 this year.

Complaints have crept up gradually since the recession began, but increased six-fold between 2008 and 2009 to reach 6,429. That figure then doubled in 2010, before reaching 16,142 by the end of November.

Full figures for this year are not yet available.

Of the 16,142 complaints:

- Over 7,000 were about claimants allegedly getting unemployment benefits while still in work.

- 4,312 were about alleged breaches of the cohabitation rules for single parents.

- 830 focussed on people suspected of claiming benefits while living outside Ireland.

Welfare payments cannot be stopped because of an anonymous report. However, such tip-offs can lead to a review of a person's entitlements to benefits.

This year, more than 12,000 of the tip-offs were sent for further examination, while almost 4,000 were dismissed due to a lack of information or because no welfare payment was actually being made.



Apologies if this thread has been done already but this is going beyond a joke now, what are these so called workers doing in the department of social protection and others? makes my blood boil when their cutting rates for disability payments

pawrick

Everyone should be micro chipped and scanned at the counters! Extream reaction aside however.

Incompetent systems scammed by ordinary Irish people is not news. We've shown as a nation that if a weakness is found in a system we will attempt to exploit it legally or illegally. Not just an Irish problem however as the exact same was reported in the past year or two as happening in Japan.

According to the article they are finally linking up their systems which is a step in the right direction and should have been done a long time ago, hopefully this cuts down on the fraud (the 3 month grace period should also be reduced).

Head The Wall

Yet another reason the govt needs to invest in proper databases and systems and stop using fecking paperwork. This is simple stuff to be thinking of, how many months has it been since we found out that SW were paying prisoners dole while in prison because they only "faxed" records 2 or 3 times a year

HellFireClub

Paying pensions to dead people, only in Ireland. This highlights the kind of shocking stupidity that goes on within the Irish public service, where not a single manager could demonstrate bit of initiative on behalf of the taxpayer and hook up information on deaths from the General Registrars Office, with the the key information used by the Dept. of Social protection.

And yet again, nobody is at fault for this, nobody is responsible or culpable, whoever should have been responsible for "managing" this, will still get their automatic yearly increment as per benchmarking I & II and the Croke Park Agreement, will anyone have to even explain their failings in this regard when their yearly review comes up again?!?

spurious

Patrick McLoughlin (66), from Ballyfermot in Dublin, was given a three-year suspended sentence after defrauding the State of more than €136,000.

<snip>
McLoughlin has committed to repay An Post at the rate of €40 a week.

He must be expecting to live a while.

Surely in this day and age, cross-checking basic info to at a minimum stop payments to dead people is a simple thing?

Cavehill Red

Oh, and there was me thinking that our economic woes were all the fault of evil unemployed people fraudulently claiming benefits and single mums.
Can we have a dozen threads wishing raining fire on the heads of dead pensioners now too? Ta.

amacachi

spurious wrote: »

He must be expecting to live a while.

Surely in this day and age, cross-checking basic info to at a minimum stop payments to dead people is a simple thing?

I would've thought something similar checking PRSI against social welfare claims, they don't seem to do that either.

mikemac1

How is it that Revenue are so efficient, very helpful when you call them and they have ROS and PAYE Anytime. Super systems

But Social Protection are plagued with these stories and blame their records and systems

Can we move a few Revenue officers across to Social Protection to kick ass and modernize?

monkeypants

Cavehill Red wrote: »

Can we have a dozen threads wishing raining fire on the heads of dead pensioners now too? Ta.

Why? It's not like it was them that claimed it. They were dead.
It was the families, who may have been employed/unemployed, we don't know, but I suspect the latter as I'm sure it takes time to go down and claim it.
Misleading title to be honest. The dead pensioners weren't paid anything.

BlaasForRafa

Cavehill Red wrote: »

Oh, and there was me thinking that our economic woes were all the fault of evil unemployed people fraudulently claiming benefits and single mums.
Can we have a dozen threads wishing raining fire on the heads of dead pensioners now too? Ta.

calm down there skippy. Do you think its ok to have inefficient systems which pay out benefits that shouldn't be paid out? Do you think its ok for people to defraud the state (and by extension taxpayers) just because the amounts are individually fairly small?

All the "small" amounts add up to a whole lot and contribute to the hole that this country is in.

ardmacha

How is it that Revenue are so efficient, very helpful when you call them and they have ROS and PAYE Anytime. Super systems

But Social Protection are plagued with these stories and blame their records and systems

Exactly. People are always on here ranting about "unions" and the CPA. But some parts of the public service can do a reasonable job and others parts with the same union agreements cannot. Likewise some local authorities are relatively efficient and others not. If every section could be brought to the level of the most efficient section then there would be a major improvement.

There is a small problem that database, analytics and business intelligence experts in the PS are drifting out to the private sector where salaries for these skills continue to rise. Who could blame them, since in their present jobs the mob (who almost entirely lack these skills) is howling for their salaries to halved when they are already not very competitive.

Maura74

This has been going in the UK for many years....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1430427/200m-lost-in-pension-fraud-as-families-fail-to-report-deaths.html

cannot understand it myself when there is technology like this available...

http://www.breathingearth.net/

The_Thing

HellFireClub wrote: »

.....
And yet again, nobody is at fault for this, nobody is responsible or culpable, whoever should have been responsible for "managing" this, will still get their automatic yearly increment as per benchmarking I & II and the Croke Park Agreement, will anyone have to even explain their failings in this regard when their yearly review comes up again?!?

Not true, many of these government employees will already be at the top of their grade.

The Internet Explorer

Laugh out loud. Laugh out loud in absolute despair.

The_Thing

The Internet Explorer wrote: »

Laugh out loud. Laugh out loud in absolute despair.

I think it's better the citizens of Ireland swindle the Government out of this 18 million than some anonymous bond-holder.

Icepick

Maura74 wrote: »

This has been going in the UK for many years....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1430427/200m-lost-in-pension-fraud-as-families-fail-to-report-deaths.html

So Ireland is only 8 years behind the UK now?
sweet

SHOVELLER

The obvious question here is why the department did not have access to the GRO before now. But as usual nobody will take responsibility. The incompetence at the top level of that department is shocking.

Grace period? We cannot afford this luxury.

gandalf

HellFireClub wrote: »

Paying pensions to dead people, only in Ireland.

As pointed out already this is and has happened in the UK and we and the English are in the Vauxhall Conference compared to the Premier League in Japan

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2010/09/pensions

Apparently they have a quarter of a million centenarians who are "missing".

What it does show is the desperate need for all organs of the Public Service to have a universal ID for citizens who are in the system. That way anomalies like people who are dead getting a pension can be stopped once a death certificate is issued.

Then we could also look at tapering child benefit down if you went above a certain income threshold so that those who really need it get it which should be easy if Revenue and Social Protections systems are talking.

mikemac1

HellFireClub wrote: »

where not a single manager could demonstrate bit of initiative on behalf of the taxpayer and hook up information on deaths from the General Registrars Office, with the the key information used by the Dept. of Social protection.

Well I'm no manager

But just thinking about it, seems so obvious some bright spark in Social Protection could have done it and gotten an easy promotion

Or maybe things don't work like that
But as you said, just some initiative

n97 mini

It's not quite as bad as it seems. Once the Dept is told of the death (by way of a Death Cert from the Executor), all payments made since the date of death are automatically fished back out of the bank account they were paid into, no questions asked.

My own personal experience of the staff in the relevant Depts is that they couldn't have been nicer or more understanding, but they are also very much on the ball. If you haven't returned money you owe, they will gently remind you occasionally.

Maura74

It is not just pensions that is continued to be paid out the greedy families when an parent dies, it is also the free TV license, fuel allowance, rental of telephone and medical card ie free prescriptions, water rates and whatever that person got while being a pensioner....

NIMAN

Can family members be done for fraud in these cases?

ShooterSF

Theft of 130k and it results in a suspended sentence. What a joke, some warning that is. And now he will still get tax payers money to pay back a tiny portion and to spend on himself. Lost for words.

WalterMitty

I know of a person who still uses their childs free travel pass to go on holidays on trains and buses all over the country. The Child got it for a mild disability in past, but the disability in no way stopped the child going to college (where they still claimed disability depite the disability not affecting their ability to work or study in any way due to advances in medical technology) The child is now in 20s and working away.

jbkenn

The_Thing wrote: »

I think it's better the citizens of Ireland swindle the Government out of this 18 million than some anonymous bond-holder.

The problem, The_Thing, is the Government has no money, it has borrowed money, which the taxpayers have to repay, and taxpayer money, so these fraudsters did'nt defraud the Government, they defrauded you., can you grasp this basic fact?.

NIMAN

jbkenn wrote: »

The problem, The_Thing, is the Government has no money, it has borrowed money, which the taxpayers have to repay, and taxpayer money, so these fraudsters did'nt defraud the Government, they defrauded you., can you grasp this basic fact?.

Maybe people are starting to understand this, and might explain why the amount of anonymous tip-offs to Revenue, Benefits offices etc are rocketing as mentioned in the media the last few days.

Maura74

I know of a family that lived at the other end of their family home and that sibling and family benefitted from all the allowances that allocated to the elderly parent as a pensioners.

This included free TV Licenses and fuel allowance free line rental all the connection line up in the sibling home with just a hallway dividing them form the parent. Also the sibling and family lived rent free as they built their home on the parent ground on a piecemeal basis.

Also the sibling got carers allowances for caring, but was out working and was taking the entire parent pension and only gave back what the sibling wife decided to give the parent back from pension. The parent was housebound and did not need much as the money could not be spent due to not being able to get out of the home without help. The sibling and his family living the end of her home was in total control of elderly parent.

Nothing much could be done as the parent was of sound mind and also lived in the country with not much transport and wanted the sibling and family living nearby.

I can assure you when the parent died that family lost every benefit that they were getting from the state but they took all of the estate because they lived there for so long.

So you see it goes on long before the pensioner has passed away.

Dannyboy83

ardmacha wrote: »

Some parts of the public service can do a reasonable job and others parts with the same union agreements cannot. Likewise some local authorities are relatively efficient and others not.
If every section could be brought to the level of the most efficient section then there would be a major improvement.

Agree.
But Revenue are the exception - they operate at a high standard, while most of the other organisations operate at a much lower standard.

If we could even just bring the 2 most expensive departments (Social Protection, Health) up to even half the same standard as revenue, that would be a major achievement.

Anecdotal, but I cannot remember the last time Revenue were in the media due to some scandal, whereas Social Protection and Health are in the media on a weekly basis due to scandals and screw ups.

There is a small problem that database, analytics and business intelligence experts in the PS are drifting out to the private sector where salaries for these skills continue to rise. Who could blame them, since in their present jobs the mob (who almost entirely lack these skills) is howling for their salaries to halved when they are already not very competitive.

Disagree.
This is most definitely not the explanation, based on those I've spoken to.
The real reason at the most fundamental level is a cultural difference, but you already knew that anyway.
The Department of Social Protection are an utter abomination, as were all connected entities e.g. FAS.

You cannot refine "sh1t". It will always remain "sh1t".
At least there is a plan with fixing our Health system - i.e. FairCare.
There is no such plan for Social Protection.
Yet this department, above all others, requires a fundamental rethink from the absolute core.

Draft in some experienced managers from Revenue, then look to adopting a proven system, such as Hartz IV in Germany.
The Irish system is simply not fit for purpose.

Dannyboy83

gandalf wrote: »

As pointed out already this is and has happened in the UK and we and the English are in the Vauxhall Conference compared to the Premier League in Japan

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2010/09/pensions

Apparently they have a quarter of a million centenarians who are "missing".

How would we compare on a per head basis tho?

I mean, if I have a flock of 70 million sheep, then it's very easy to lose a few hundred thousand here and there.

But if your flock is a mere 3.5 million, yet you're still losing an equal number, something would seem to be very wrong.

What it does show is the desperate need for all organs of the Public Service to have a universal ID for citizens who are in the system. That way anomalies like people who are dead getting a pension can be stopped once a death certificate is issued.

Then we could also look at tapering child benefit down if you went above a certain income threshold so that those who really need it get it which should be easy if Revenue and Social Protections systems are talking.

Agree.

Icepick

mikemac1 wrote: »

But just thinking about it, seems so obvious some bright spark in Social Protection could have done it and gotten an easy promotion

But why should they do it when they get pay increases regardless?

The_Thing

jbkenn wrote: »

The problem, The_Thing, is the Government has no money, it has borrowed money, which the taxpayers have to repay, and taxpayer money, so these fraudsters did'nt defraud the Government, they defrauded you., can you grasp this basic fact?.

I'm well able to grasp the basic facts.

I personally wouldn't do it because I feel it sullies the memory of the deceased, but until I see the likes of Seanie Fitz, David Drumm and the rest of them hauled into court I will not condemn anyone for doing this. Some of it at least will have been spent in the local economy unlike the billions pissed away on the banks