Errors add up to €36m in overpayments by social welfare

Suspected fraud accounted for almost €41m of overpayments which were recovered from some 20,720 welfare recipients by the Department of Social Protection in 2012.

But another €36m was accounted for by customer or third-party errors in the case of almost 41,000 customers, and €12.6m arose from reviews of assets of more than 400 deceased people whose estates were being distributed by solicitors.

Mistakes by the department resulted in known overpayments of €7.7m, bringing the total of over- payments recovered to €97m, representing just under 0.5% of its €2bn-plus budget that year.