Blog Should welfare recipients have to queue in post offices during coronavirus lockdown?

If this is indeed a pandemic then surely poorer people on the dole etc
should not be forced to go into queues in post offices every single week risking coronavirus infection
just to sign their name purely out of some Mary Hanafin inspired bureaucratic exercise in spite.

These are people in society least able to afford to deal with the costs of self isolation, hand gels, masks, etc etc
and the ones least likely to have private medical insurance etc

The Department should move all welfare payments from post offices to
direct payments into bank accounts to minimise completely unnecessary queueing in post offices until this passes.

Some welfare payments are already done this way but currently some are not given this option.
This is an easy change which would significantly reduce the risk of getting sick for those at the bottom of society.

 

[The Grand Turcopolier]

The scammers will just go on disability instead and that means they get it paid into their bank account anyway.
So punishing everyone else on jobseekers serves no useful purpose except humiliation and spite
and monitoring and control of their movements.

The figures for fraud are actually quite low and most welfare overpayments are due to errors made by the department itself.
However it serves the agendas of the department to find some pole who somehow gets away with fraud once in a blue moon
and then plaster the case all over the media to make it seem like fraud is rife.

There is no "massive fraud" at all. Most poorer people are basically decent and honest.
It's the white collar c*nts in banks etc that you really need to watch, but somehow we never do!!

Man jailed for welfare fraud admits to further €18,000 false claim in benefit

Leendert Stolk pleaded guilty to 22 sample counts of wrongfully claiming social welfare

www.irishtimes.com

€48,000 welfare fraud student caught using false identity

Facial recognition software, used by the Department of Social Protection to clamp down on welfare fraud, identified an NUIG student who was claiming social welfare under a false name over a five-year period. A blue jacket, worn by the final year engineering student while fraudulently claiming...

connachttribune.ie

Man who cheated dole for 15 years had €150k sitting in bank account

Gardai are carrying out a massive clampdown on dole and benefits cheats who have conned millions of euro in bogus payments from the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection.

www.herald.ie

Couple in Kildare sentenced over 'one of largest welfare fraud cases in the State'

The couple claimed rent allowance to pay off a mortgage that the husband got under a false name.

www.thejournal.ie

Over 10,000 investigations into suspected welfare fraud last year

Last year the department received nearly 14,700 reports of social welfare fraud.

www.breakingnews.ie

 

[GodsDog]

The examples you cited were foreigners and immigrants who were probably treated with kid gloves and given leeway by the department.
who generally give these "people of colour" an easier ride for fear of cries of "racist".

One of your articles points out that the department and gardai reviewed 750,000 cases resulting in just a handful of fraud cases
mostly "enriching" foreign conmen and women given an easy ride which is why this was possible.
a pretty low level of fraud overall. And the security measures and crackdown probably cost a lot more than the actual fraud itself!
which would never have happened if the staff had been doing their job properly instead of giving all these foreign chancers leeway.

Ordinary paddies on the dole don't get away with shit. They have to electronically sign each week at a post office
and again in intreo and are regularly interviewed and put on stuff like jobseach etc.
There is little opportunity for fraud.