THE NUMBER claiming unemployment benefit in Border counties continues to rise, while a crackdown on suspected cross-Border welfare fraud has led to just 24 claims being suspended, saving €300,000, according to official figures.
Minister for Social and Family Affairs Mary Hanafin agreed yesterday that savings to date had been relatively small, but claimed the crackdown was a significant deterrent to people claiming unemployment benefit here when they were actually living in the North.
The campaign was “sending out a very clear message” that social welfare fraud would not be tolerated, she told RTÉ Radio’s News at One.
An investigation by social welfare inspectors of some 900 claims resulted in 24 being suspended to date, while an unspecified number of claims were not pursued.
The inspectors were working as part of multi-agency checkpoints set up along Border counties to deter social welfare abuses, evasion of vehicle registration tax, gas and oil abuses and road traffic offences.
Since March last, 32 checkpoints were set up by gardaí with welfare and Customs officials.
The Minister said the multi-agency operations would continue and had led to a reduction in the rate of increase of new claims in welfare offices along the Border. Welfare payments here are significantly higher than in the North, she noted.
The official figures disclose a massive increase since July 2008 in unemployment benefit claims in the five Border counties of Cavan, Donegal, Leitrim, Louth and Monaghan.
A total of 31,431 people were on the Live Register in the five counties in July 2008, but that figure rose to 55,806 in July 2009.
A spokesman for the Irish National Organisation for the Unemployed, John Stewart, said such statistics indicated the depth of the jobless crisis and the need for the Government to make tackling unemployment its first priority.
