Annemarie van Gaal doesn’t think junior finance minister Frans Weekers has the entrepreneurial touch when it comes to taking decisive action.

I’m really grateful to those Bulgarians. If they hadn’t robbed us so blatantly, millions of euros would still be leaving the country.

We now know the Bulgarian benefit fraud was at least €95m but this may very well be just be the tip of the iceberg. Who knows what the real figure is. The Bulgarians have given us a wake-up call. Thanks, guys.

Flaw

But are we awake? No, we’re still snoozing. Weekers announced that, from 2014, the tax office may do a preliminary check to see if housing or health benefits are justified.

Imagine this: an entrepreneur discovers a serious flaw in his financial system – for years the discounts on his bills and estimates were too high. He lost lots of money but fortunately he has now spotted the flaw. Do you think for one minute the entrepreneur will send a single bill or estimate that contains the same mistake? Of course not. Any entrepreneur worth his salt would work every hour god sends him to find the source of the flaw and rectify it. He wouldn’t leave it for seven months because by that time he’d be bankrupt.

And what does our government do? Our government announces Measures: we will become stricter and more alert but it is going to take about seven months. Weekers has spent every day since his student days in politics: local councillor, MP and now a junior finance minister. It’s a fine career but not one that features taking decisive action.

Easy

It’s shocking to see how easy it is to claim health benefits. It only took me about two minutes. After I logged in with my DigiD code the tax office only wanted to know two things: do I share my house with others and how much do I earn. Then they wanted a bank account number. Kerching!

Within eight weeks the tax office informed me about the amount I would be receiving and four weeks later the money was in the account. There you are. The whole thing takes twelve weeks. And Weekers claims this is not long enough to check whether the claimant has a right to the benefits or not.

Here’s a simple tip, completely free of charge. Call the computer programmer at the tax office in the morning and tell him to add another question to the list. Ask every claimant to fill in his health insurance number.

Health insurers made a profit of €1,4bn last year, surely they can free up someone to check policy numbers for the tax office. It’s quick, it’s easy: if you don’t live here you don’t have health insurance and are not eligible for health benefits. Bob’s your uncle. And he’s wide awake which is more than I can say of our politicians.

Annemarie van Gaal is an entrepreneur and head of AM Media. She is also a writer and television personality.