Irish check blitz fades
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• Multi-agency checkpoints are being quietly dropped in the Irish Republic. The move follows sustained campaigning by civil liberties groups, organisations representing the unemployed, and opposition politicians.
Test checks, carried out last year at 19 sites, discovered frauds in 118 social welfare claims and saved the Exchequer 1r£350,000 in a year. A measure to make the checks a permanent feature of the system was then included in the 1999 Social Welfare Act.
However, the Department of Social Welfare last week admitted that there will be relatively few checks. The department said the suggestion for multi-agency checks had come from Irish police in the first place.
The border area was found to have the highest incidence of fraud in the pilots, with one in every 10 vehicles checked yielding results for the inspectors.
However, the IRHA said the inspections had caused delays of up to two hours in some places.