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This report examines the Department’s debt management and criminal prosecution processes to establish its effectiveness in identifying, recording and recovering welfare payment debts, and in prosecuting fraud cases.

The evidence in relation to the incidence of excess payment of social welfare was examined with a view to establishing the overall scale of the problem, and the implications for the regularity of expenditure reported in the accounts of the Vote for Social and Family Affairs and of the Social Insurance Fund. The examination also reviewed the adequacy of the measures used by the Department in relation to its performance in managing the risks of excess payment, and the effectiveness of its control activity.

This report summarises expenditure on social welfare from the various accounts, indicating the source and application of the funds applied over the past four years, together with 2010 projections.

This report focused on redundancy payment administration and reviewed Departmental controls to manage the payment systems. It also examined subsequent employment patterns for persons made redundant up to the end of 2009.

Skillnets is an example of a service delivery model where publicly subvented services are delivered by the private sector at arms length from the funding body. This report reviewed how those services are delivered and how the use of the public funding is monitored to ensure that it is applied for the purpose intended.

This report sets out to ascertain whether the risk methodology used by the Department is effective in profiling the farming population in a way that ensures the efficiency of inspection by focussing on the most risky cases; whether the structure and organisation of the inspection programme is sufficient to put a check on the full range of criteria taking account of timing of the underlying conditions and whether the operation of the Department’s Integrated Controls Division is cost effective in the light of the pattern of inspection activity and how the Department addressed the issues that led to an EU penalty of €715,000 being imposed.

This report has been compiled to present the full expenditure on Official Development Assistance (ODA) in one statement. It also considers the systems in place for evaluation of elements of the ODA programme.

This report is based on local reviews which outlines any residual factors emanating from the cohesion efforts of the Department, other challenges arising from the implementation of the new LCDP and the further consolidation of delivery structures.

This chapter examines the arrangements to lease social housing units from private owners. It does not examine the use, by local authorities, of unsold affordable homes for social housing or the procurement of units by approved housing bodies using private finance remunerated on the basis of lease payments, both of which the Department also classifies as part of its wider Social Housing Leasing Initiative.

The objective of this report is to provide an overview of the funds flowing from and through central Government sources to local authorities, and of the purposes for which the funds have been provided.