Department overpaid over €17m of welfare to people who have left the country

The Department of Social Protection said some of the money recovered could include overpayments from other years and that efforts to claw back the money continued on an ongoing basis. File photo

More than €17m worth of welfare overpayments to people who no longer living in Ireland were uncovered over the past two years, with around €8.2m recouped during the same period.

The Department of Social Protection said some of the money recovered could include overpayments from other years and that efforts to claw back the money continued on an ongoing basis.

The level of overpayment rose by more than a third last year when €10.2m in benefits to individuals “absent from the state” were flagged. That compared to €7.4m in payments made to nearly 2,800 people who were not resident in Ireland during 2024.

Figures from the Department of Social Protection show that child benefit payments accounted for the biggest proportion of the money.

Last year, more than €3.4m was wrongly paid out in children’s allowance to 1,867 parents, according to data released under FOI. That was up markedly from 2024 when there was €2.5 million in child benefit payments to individuals absent from the State.

The scale of individual overpayments ranged in size from just a few hundred euro to five-figure sums.

Last year, 194 people who were no longer in the State were found to have claimed more than €2.15m in disability allowance. That worked out at an average overpayment of just over €11,000.

A further €1.7m was incorrectly paid out through the “one parent family payment” to 235 different PPS holders. The per-person amount was around €7,300, according to the figures released.

Almost €1.15m was overpaid under the jobseeker’s allowance to 484 people while 95 individuals received a combined €794,000 in incorrect non-contributory state pension payments.

Other sums included €115,500 for respite care and €43,650 in pandemic unemployment welfare entitlements. There was also one payment of €1,817 for “farm assist” and six payments totalling €9,380 in blind person’s pensions.

Recouped payments

Of the almost €4.4m in welfare paid to people outside the state that was recouped in 2025, more than half related to child benefit.

Altogether, sums totalling €2.34m were recovered in nearly 17,000 children’s allowance cases found by the department.

Around €470,000 was recovered under the disability allowance scheme and €492,000 from jobseeker allowance payments.

In 2024, child benefit also accounted for the largest share of overpayments detected at just over €2.5 million across 1,685 cases.

Jobseeker’s allowance was the next biggest category with almost €1.3m paid to 773 people, followed by disability allowance at €1.36m involving 148 non-residents.

A further €793,000 was overpaid under the one parent family payment scheme while €623,000 related to non-contributory state pensions.