Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 25 May 2010
42 Deputy Bernard Allen asked the Minister for Social Protection the number of one-parent family payments suspended due to an error in the system whereby the annual review and declaration form was not issued to claimants; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21618/10]
View answerAll recipients of the one-parent family payment are asked to complete, an annual review form (OFP 40) to certify that they continue to fulfil the conditions for payment. The form is generated automatically and the customer is allowed two weeks to return it to the Department. If the form is not returned or not returned in time, the payment is automatically suspended by the computer system. On 13 May local offices of the Department began to receive enquiries from some OFP customers who stated that their payment was not in the post office when they called to collect it.
Following an investigation in the computer operations area of the Department it transpired that due to an oversight, a batch of approximately 400 OFP 40 forms had not been processed and the usual controls for monitoring this work had failed on this occasion. When the Regional Director's Office of the Department was alerted to the problem, they instructed local offices to reinstate payment to any customer who enquired about the non payment.
At this stage payment has been restored to the majority of customers affected. However, in approximately 30 cases where payment was stopped, we have received no contact from the customer about their payment. I have arranged for the Department to contact these customers to establish whether they continue to fulfil the conditions for entitlement to the one parent family payment and in such cases to make appropriate arrangements to restore payment without further delay. I very much regret the inconvenience caused to customers by the failure to issue the forms and I can assure the Deputy that the Department is reviewing its procedures for issuing such forms.
