Fraud spotlight turned on Northern Ireland

A 'Counter Fraud Unit' - similar to the Directorate of Counter Fraud Services in mainland UK - has been established by the province's Department of Health, Social Services & Public Safety. The unit, which is based in the Central Services Agency, will be staffed by 11 civil servants, and headed by Neville Jones who has previously worked on the implementation of anti-fraud policy within Northern Ireland's DoH. 'We'll have two full-time people investigating practitioner fraud, and seven on exemption fraud,' he said. 'The unit will work on behalf of our Health Boards to investigate referrals from them in relation to suspected and potential fraud.' Bairbre de Brun, minister for health, social services and public safety, said: 'Exemption fraud is a major problem. It is estimated that in 1999/2000 some &\#163;14m was lost to the Health Service here, through people not paying for their prescriptions, their dental and ophthalmic treatment, when they should have. 'This is money which could have paid for the equivalent of some 14,000 general operations or some 560 domiciliary care packages, 490 nursing care placements and 320 residential care placements.' In 1999/2000, &\#163;12m was spent on ophthalmic services by the Northern Ireland Department. Ministers' attention to fraudulent activity by optical practitioners was first drawn by an Audit Office report in 1998 which investigated the incidence of duplicate sight tests. The report also found that 1.74m people were registered with GPs - 80,000 above the population of the province at the time (News, September 18, 1998).