Social Protection overpaid €1.1bn to welfare recipients in a decade

Data released to whistleblower Shane Corr show that, as at the end of 2022, 292 people had run up overpayment balances from the Department of Social Protection of more than €100,000. Picture: RTÉ Investigates/RTÉ

Almost €1.1bn in welfare overpayments have been paid out in the past decade, with nearly 300 people owing more than €100,000 apiece in back payments at the end of 2022.

The Department of Social Protection annually overpaid sums of €70m and €130m, when adjusted for inflation, to welfare recipients since 2013, per the department’s own official accounts.

However, the outstanding balance for overpayments has not reduced during that time, and has instead increased from €280m in 2012 to €383m at the end of 2022.

Meanwhile, figures released to whistleblower Shane Corr show that 292 people had run up overpayment balances from the department of greater than €100,000 as at the end of 2022. 

Several of those higher balances, all for sums in excess of €250,000, remained unchanged  between December 2021 and December 2022.

Still others were reducing by a weekly amount of between €10 and €50, amounts that would see those overpayments not being repaid until centuries have passed.

€125m of 'irrecoverable' overpayments 

The reasons listed for welfare overpayments in the appropriation accounts of the department each year are categorised as either ‘suspected fraud’, ‘customer error’, official error’, or ‘estate cases’.

Of those categories, customer error was responsible for the greatest amount of overpayments, €359m over the 10-year period, with official error accounting for €18.5m of the total.

Roughly €125m worth of overpayments was written off as “irrecoverable” between 2012 and 2022. More than €35m of that figure was written off in 2019 alone.

Efforts to recover overpayments

A Department of Social Protection spokesperson said that in recent years “the value of overpayments raised has been relatively constant, in the range of €100m to €125m”, though this figure is somewhat in excess of the amounts overpaid in 2021 and 2022, the last two years for which official accounts have been published.

They said the department recovered €88m in 2023, up from €75m in 2022, although the official figure for recovered overpayment for 2022 was €52m.

The spokesperson said overpayments “in any given year represent less than 0.5%” of the department’s total expenditure. They added that the department “is proactive in its efforts to recover all overpayments”.

“Where an overpayment occurs, the department seeks to recover the full value of the overpayment.

Because of the potential impact of overpayment recovery on individuals with limited means, appropriate controls are required to ensure fairness and reasonableness. 

As such, if someone is still receiving a welfare payment after being overpaid, the department may deduct up to 15% of an individual’s rate in the goal of recovering the overpayment, which would amount to €35 of the weekly jobseekers’ payment.

That does not account for the very large outstanding balances present which remained unchanged on the department’s books year-on-year at the end of 2022, when 16 individuals accounted for €4.2m in overpayments.

The department did not respond directly to a query as to how writeoffs of overpayments are approved, but said a review of such overpayments is carried out annually, with those writeoffs then sanctioned by the Department of Public Expenditure.

“It is understandable that outstanding debt has risen over time as it is the policy of the department to work with people and consider personal circumstances in determining a repayment plan,” the spokesperson said.