Criminals on the dole and their partners have been stripped of more than €11m in social welfare payments by the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) over two decades.

A doctoral thesis on the CAB also reveals that it recovered an eye-watering €178.5m in taxes and €26m in seized assets in the same period.

However, its powers to block social welfare payments - the "forgotten child" of the bureau - impact on more people at the lower levels of criminality than forfeitures or tax demands.

The thesis, by PJ Ryan, a law lecturer at Limerick Institute of Technology, says its social welfare powers are a key feature of CAB's intention to fight crime at local and community levels,

Targeting social welfare also allows the bureau to hit more people than it would by raising tax assessments or seizing assets.

The bureau instigated more than 600 actions against dole claimants in one seven-year period, compared to 198 tax assessments in the same period.

Sources in CAB agree that their social welfare activities are often eclipsed by seizures of high-end watches, top-of-the-range cars and designer goods which bring a greater return for the taxpayer. "A lot of these criminals see social welfare as their weekly wages, their right," said one source. "And then they use this income to claim that their earnings are legitimate."

In the aftermath of the Regency Hotel shooting that sparked the murderous feud between the Kinahan and Hutch gangs, CAB uncovered several social welfare claimants living wildly beyond their means when they clamped down on Kinahan henchman Liam Byrne's crime group.

Byrne's mother, Sadie Byrne, survived on a €227 a week pension but drove a Lexus. She had previously repaid €43,000 in social welfare overpayments in €200 weekly payments.

Kelly Quinn, the partner of David Byrne, who was killed in the Regency Hotel shoot-out, also lived on social welfare payments and a rent subsidy but drove a €62,000 Lexus, seized by the CAB. She had also taken flights the previous year to the UK, Spain and Las Vegas.

In 2017, CAB raided the home of Kenneth Carpenter and his partner, Elaine Byrne, and seized a €2,600 Chanel handbag, four high-end watches worth €100,000 and a Brown Thomas Platinum card that requires holders spend at least €5,000 a year instore. The couple's only legitimate declared income was Elaine Byrne's allowance as a lone parent.

An early social welfare target was James Gantley, a father-of-four who found his dole payments blocked by CAB in 1998. The court heard evidence of property transactions of more than €200,000, a villa in Spain and €94,000 in a biscuit tin. Mr Gantley, years later, pleaded guilty to "voicing" the ransom demand in a botched attempt to extort money from a delivery firm.

Earlier this year, gardai in Drogheda announced they planned to target feuding drugs trafficking gangs that have terrorised the Louth town by going after their social welfare payments.

Its most recent annual report showed that of the €5.6m CAB returned to the State last year, €323,000 arose from social welfare overpayments, while it also recovered €2.2m seized as the proceeds of crime and just over €3m in taxes.

Mr Ryan's thesis finds that between 1996 and 2006, CAB's social welfare activities has generated savings to the exchequer to the tune of €7,808,753.04 and received recovery payments of €4,066,136.36.

"Whilst considerably less than the financial income generated from forfeiture of assets it nonetheless represents a significant denial of cash flow to criminality from an area of the bureau that does not receive significant attention in wider academic or media discourse," it said.

The thesis, "The examination of how the methods employed by the Criminal Assets Bureau move Ireland in a new direction of crime control", was completed as part of Mr Ryan's doctoral studies at the University of Limerick.

Sunday Independent