The Pandemic Unemployment Payment was introduced in an extremely short period of time in order to cushion the incomes of citizens who had lost their employment following the onset of an unprecedented public health crisis. Within 3 weeks of the payment being launched over 500,000 people had been paid. The delivery of the scheme on such a scale and in such a short time represented a major achievement by my Department.
To date, over 870,000 people have received payment under the scheme at a cost of €9 billion and over 28 million payments have issued.
My Department always has to strike a balance between applying tight controls and checks on claims on the one hand and not frustrating a person’s entitlement to a payment on the other. Throughout the Covid crisis, my Department has prioritised prompt claim processing and payment in order to ensure that people affected by the pandemic had the security of an income support payment. This was necessary and appropriate in light of the circumstances prevailing at the time. In addition, while prioritising prompt payment in the circumstances of the pandemic, payment and claim processing controls were applied to reduce the risk of incorrect or fraudulent payments. Inevitably, some people will have sought to take advantage of the scheme, but most people, as would be expected, acted honourably and honestly.
As part of its ongoing review and examination of operating processes designed to inform how controls can be improved, my Department’s Internal Audit Unit conducted an examination of the controls in place over the PUP scheme in 2020. The report concluded that the controls in place to assure the integrity of PUP payments were adequate, appropriate, and effective to provide reasonable assurance that risks were being managed and objectives should be met.
The audit included an examination of a random selection of 100 claims from a claim load dated 9 August 2020. The examination showed that 17 out of the 100 claims did not indicate an entitlement for the full duration that they received PUP. These included claims correctly awarded but not stopped on time by the customer when they returned to work. This resulted in short periods of overlap between receipt of PUP and employment. Of the 17 cases, 14 were closed at the date of the audit report; of these, 5 had been stopped as a result of the controls in place and the remaining 9 were stopped by the customer. Overpayments were therefore detected in 3 live cases (or 3%) out of the 100 cases examined.
The Internal Audit report recommended that that control review activity should continue, using the various means in place, including analytical tools and risk-based analysis. The recommendations were accepted by the Department, with a number of specific control projects undertaken as a result. These projects were in addition to the on-going control activity of the Department.
My Department follows up on all cases where it is identified that a person has been overpaid PUP and takes a reasonable approach to recovery of sums overpaid where these overpayments are believed to be due to genuine error or oversight by the claimant.
In circumstances where fraud is suspected the Department will seek to prosecute the people involved; a number of prosecutions have been initiated and convictions secured. More cases are being considered for prosecution.
I trust that this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.
