Fraudulent collection of employment benefit

M

MsGinger

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We were told that an ex-employee has been signing on in Ireland once a month but living in Poland and flying back once a month on a cheap Ryanair flight to sign on and collect his money each month. Obviously if he is living (and possibly working, this I'm not sure of) in Poland, he is not available and seeking work in the state, so this is a fraudulent collection of state benefits.

I'm not suggesting that this will only happen with foreigners, I'm well aware that there are probably many Irish people also fraudulently collecting employment payments but the above is just an example.

As a lot of construction employees are not permanent residents of the state, this could happen a lot more in future.

What, if any, procedures are in place with the DFSA to prevent this from happening?

This person has been reported to the DFSA who have said they will investigate.
 
Bring back weekly signing on I say!!!!!!
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Daily signing where you have to turn up and do some community work, training or attend a job club would be a good idea.
 
What address is he giving? I assume he's using an Irish address. No doubt the owner of the property wont be impressed about his place being used for fraud - maybe someone should tip him off.
 
Yes, picture the scene: 200,000 people turning up at 57 offices country wide to "sign on" every day. And how many extra civil servants would need to be employed to administer/monitor this?
 
ClubMan said:
How would the unemployed person look for permanent employment then?
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I am sure there would be no problem giving them the day off every time they have an interview... plus each day could include time for job searching...
 
Yes, picture the scene: 200,000 people turning up at 57 offices country wide to "sign on" every day. And how many extra civil servants would need to be employed to administer/monitor this?

Around 200,000 i'd imagine!
 
runner said:
Yes, picture the scene: 200,000 people turning up at 57 offices country wide to "sign on" every day. And how many extra civil servants would need to be employed to administer/monitor this?

Around 200,000 i'd imagine!
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Nah, you couldn't hire more than 100,000 of them - after all they need people to 'monitor'.
 
I doubt it would be 200,000. Maybe some of the unemployed people could do the monitoring as part of their community work?
 
ms ginger
slightly off your topic . a friend of mine has told me that he knows of a couple of people who have brought their children over from poland to get children allowance and then kids are sent back home to poland once allowance is got
 
johnwilliams said:
ms ginger
slightly off your topic . a friend of mine has told me that he knows of a couple of people who have brought their children over from poland to get children allowance and then kids are sent back home to poland once allowance is got
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And there is nothing wrong with that, didn't even need to bring the kids over in the first place. The parent is entitled to claim in whichever country they reside.
 
Berni said:
The parent is entitled to claim in whichever country they reside.
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I was always under the impression that the parent(s) would need to live in Ireland for a couple of years and produce a certain number of paid tax and prsi before being able to claim any benefits. Well, that was the case with my German friend and only after they checked if she paid enough tax and prsi in the last two years she lived here, she got her maternity and child benefits approved. Maybe they handle every case differently but I would have thought there is a general rule for every one.
 
alaskaonline said:
I was always under the impression that the parent(s) would need to live in Ireland for a couple of years and produce a certain number of paid tax and prsi before being able to claim any benefits.
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The posts above are specifically about Child Benefit. See here.
 
The guy in question had an Irish address. We have quite a number of foreign employees, mainly Polish and you can often get 10 or more of them at one address, so there would always be someone there to get his post and let him know if something arrived.
 
This type of fraudulent claiming is possible by claimants selecting the EFT payment facility, which basically means that money is lodged to a bank account and there is no need for the person to be resident in the state in order to withdraw it. All they have to do is present themselves once every 4 weeks to "sign on". as you say, friends can deal with post to give the impression they are still living in Ireland. SW have now started tovisit non-irish national claimants within 8 weeks of signing on. They also have stopped offering the EFT facility to new claimants.
 
It's good to know that they have some procedures in place to prevent this.

Now they just need to tackle the unemployed who don't want to work!
 
MsGinger said:
Now they just need to tackle the unemployed who don't want to work!
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Don't they do this already in various ways - e.g. by requiring evidence that the claimant is genuinely available for and seeking work, that they sign up for training if applicable, putting a time limit on how long JB can be claimed before the claimant must revert to means tested JA etc.?
 
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