Department identifies 60,000 cases of overpayment of covid unemployment benefit
Department Minihane Picture: File Means Case Following Payments Of Saved €501m Tested Cancelling Has Welfare Protection From Denis The Social Reviews
The Department of Social Protection has ‘cross-checked’ 30 million pandemic unemployment payments (PUP) against Revenue records in a bid to recover overpayments issued over the course of covid-19 restrictions.
To date, the department has identified up to 60,000 cases where there was an overlap between receiving the PUP and a period of employment. However, as of last December just €13 million of the €55.5 million issued in overpayments had been recovered by the department.
Between 2020 and 2022, around €9.2 billion was issued to those who saw their employment affected by public health restrictions.
The Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) previously highlighted the risk of overpayments through the scheme, as well as the increased difficulty of recovering older debt.
Overpayments of the PUP raised last year amounted to €6.9 million, the C&AG found. The details are included in its annual report of the accounts of the public services, published on Monday.
The C&AG noted that with expenditure of €24.2 billion by the Department of Social Protection in 2023, “even low levels of payments in excess of entitlements to welfare can amount to significant losses of public funds".
The level of irregular payments found by the department through its ongoing programme of scheme-level control surveys continues to be "material", it noted.
Separately, expenditure on an allowance paid to international protection applicants rose to €34.4 million last year, an increase of 78% from 2022, due to the increased number of applicants.
While the daily expenses allowance is an income-tested entitlement, the Department of Social Protection only initiated income testing for applicants with effect from June 2024.
New claims under the scheme should be reviewed after eight to 10 months, and a person only remains eligible if they are residing in a designated centre, the C&AG noted.
"The department had stated it was no longer possible to enforce the residential condition in all locations, due to the unprecedented increase in applicants for international protection in recent years."
Meanwhile, the Department of Social Protection has saved €501m from cancelling means-tested welfare payments following case reviews.
According to the C&AG report, €83m of this saving was found through automatic analytic reviews carried out through Revenue’s Real Time Lookup system (RTLU), which can identify discrepancies in social welfare claims.
The remaining €418m was found through standard case reviews carried out by the Department of Social Protection. These case reviews can be triggered for a number of reasons, including a commencement of employment notification, anonymous reports and time passing from a previous review.
Throughout 2023, there were 508,012 case reviews carried out manually by the department, with savings being found in 16% of these reviews.
Through the RTLU, savings worth €22.7m were found for cases opened related to jobseekers allowance, while €25.9m was saved by reviews of 3,200 cases surrounding disability allowance payments.