Social welfare probe as more than €25m overpaid to people who have died  

Jobseeker’s allowance of €243,037 was paid to 12 deceased people. File picture

Social welfare overpayments worth €25.6m made to dead people were uncovered by the Department of Social Protection in 2025.

Of this, nearly €24.7m related to pension overpayments to over 1,500 pensioners who had passed away. The data was provided to Aontú TD Paul Lawless following a parliamentary question to social protection minister Dara Calleary.

The Fianna Fáil minister confirmed that in total, some €25.65m in overpayments to people who had died were uncovered in 2025. This was up from €24.5m in 2024, €23.9m in 2023, €17.5m in 2022, and €23.5m in 2021.

Last year, the most common type of overpayments linked to deceased people was the non-contributory state pension, with overpayments of €23.3m to 489 people uncovered. There was also €378,709 worth of non-contributory state pension payments to 564 accounts.

Mr Calleary confirmed “overpayments raised on contributory schemes, [for example] state pension contributory, usually refer to a few weeks’ payments issued to financial institutions where a customer is deceased and there may have been a delay in notifying the department”.

“These overpayments are recovered from the financial institutions where possible,” he said.

Elsewhere, jobseeker’s allowance of €243,037 was paid to 12 deceased people.

Another €668,919 was overpaid to 34 people receiving carers’ allowance, while disability allowance payments worth €940,595 were overpaid to 39 people.

A widow’s pension worth €11,438 was overpaid to one widow, while illness benefit overpayments of €59,336 were linked to 93 people.

Mr Calleary told Mr Lawless that overpayments of social welfare can occur when the department or the claimant makes an error, or when a person provides “false or misleading information in the context of their claim”.

He said that when there is an outstanding social welfare overpayment or a new overpayment is discovered, the Department of Social Protection will “pursue the overpayment from the estate of the customer”.

Mr Lawless told the Irish Examiner he knew of cases in his Mayo constituency where people were contacted by the department seeking to recover funds from their deceased relatives’ estate.

It is both unreasonable and unfair to expect grieving loved ones to reconstruct financial histories from decades ago.

“It feels like the surviving family is being punished for something that may not have been their fault, and in some cases may have been a mistake on the department’s side.

“I am also aware of cases where a person dies, the bereaved family distraught and overwhelmed, fail to notify the department immediately, only to find themselves pursued for a week or two of an overpaid disability or carer’s allowance.”

He called on the minister to provide a breakdown of how many were intentional wrongdoing, and how many were a “genuine mistake” or administrative error.