Social welfare recipients overpaid by €67m

OVER €67 million has been overpaid to welfare recipients over the last two years by the Department of Social and Family Affairs, latest figures reveal.

Documents released to the Irish Examiner under the Freedom of Information Act also show that almost €17m of these overpayments could not be traced and had to be written off as irretrievable.

According to briefing material prepared for incoming Social and Family Affairs Minister Seamus Brennan, €28.7m was overpaid in 2002, while in 2003 the figure rose to €38.9m.

No figure has yet been made available for 2004 overpayments.

However, combined overpayments for the last two years total €67.6m and involve more than 82,000 separate cases.

Although just over €32m in overpaid benefits was subsequently recovered by the department, another €16.7m had to be written off. The remainder is still being pursued.

According to the documents, the overpayments arise “primarily as a result of fraud ... but can also arise through errors and misinformation”.

A departmental code of practice for recovering debts and overpayments stipulates that money owed is written off for accounting purposes if there has been “no activity” on the matter for three years. But just because an overpayment is written off does not mean it cannot be recovered at a later date. Last year, almost €1.5m in overpayments was successfully recovered despite having been previously written off.

According to Mr Brennan’s introductory brief, a new Overpayments and Debt Management (ODM) computer system for the department is at advanced planning stage.

However, the new system is likely to take a considerable amount of time to get off the ground due to the complexities of different departmental payment systems and the need for huge amounts of data to be converted into new formats.

Meanwhile, an ongoing welfare fraud clampdown saw the department save €208m in the first half of this year. Those targeted had claimed unemployment benefits, one-parent family payments and illness payouts to which they were not entitled.

Some 128 suspect cases have been sent to the Chief State Solicitor’s office, resulting in 53 court cases.