A crackdown on social welfare fraud netted over 500 million euro in the first eight months of the year.
It follows efforts from a Special Investigations Unit at the Department of Social Protection, as well as the general staff at the Department, who’ve been trained to spot suspected cases.
The cases of fraud were uncovered during an investigation of more than 900 thousand social welfare payments made up to the end of August.
Officials were already ahead of their yearly target of 780 thousand inspections at that stage.
By the end of August, over 13 hundred employers and businesses had also been checked to ensure fraud wasn’t occurring.
The work resulted in savings of 501 million euro, and the expectation now is that the end of year total could reach 645 million.
21 billion euro was spent on social welfare payments last year, which amounts to 40 per cent of government expenditure.
