Overpayments of benefit or assistance arise where a person is paid in excess of their entitlement or paid where no entitlement exists. In 2016, the Department overpaid customers by €110 million. Of this, customer fraud accounted for €41 million and relates to cases where a customer intentionally provides incomplete or inaccurate information in order to receive benefits, or deliberately fails to inform the Department of relevant changes in circumstances.
Customer error accounted for €46.7 million in overpayments last year. These cases arise where a customer has provided inaccurate or incomplete information, or failed to report a relevant change in circumstances (such as an increase in means or a change in medical condition), but where clear fraudulent intent is absent. In addition, some €20 million was deemed to have been overpaid during the process of settling the affairs of persons who had died. Most of these cases relate to pensioners who were receiving a State Pension Non-contributory payment where, after death, some level of overpayment of entitlement was judged to have arisen. Overpayments arising from departmental/administrative errors were recorded at €2.3 million in 2016.
While overpayments at any level are unacceptable, they must be judged against total programme expenditure of some €19.2 billion across the 70 or so schemes that the Department administers. The outstanding debt balance due to the Department as the end of 2016 was €482.5 million in respect of approximately 191,660 individual debts. Of this figure, 42,352 were repaying their debt which is defined as having made a repayment in the previous 5 weeks.
The number of full-time equivalent staff and the grades of persons directly involved in the recovery of overpayments is set out in the table below. It is important to note that the recovery of overpayments is also a function of the Department’s Intreo Service and of all centralised scheme areas. It is not possible to further distinguish the debt recovery component of the staff engaged across the Department’s services.
My Department’s Central Debt Unit is the area that monitors and collects statistics on overpayment and recovery policies. There are a further three dedicated Debt Recovery Units located in my Department’s Offices in Letterkenny, Longford and Sligo.
TABLE – Number of Staff (FTE) on Debt Recovery Duties (May 2017)
|
|
Central Debt Unit
|
Other Units
|
Total
|
|
Assistant Principal
|
1
|
-
|
1
|
|
Higher Executive Officer
|
1
|
1.5
|
2.5
|
|
Executive Officer
|
4
|
4.5
|
8.5
|
|
Clerical Officers
|
10
|
22.3
|
32.3
|
|
Total
|
16
|
28.3
|
44.3
|
FTE = Full-time equivalent
In late 2014, the Department introduced a new integrated overpayment recording and debt management IT system, known as DRAS. DRAS expanded on the functionality previously available to the Department and enables the operation of best practice standards in overpayment recording and debt recovery. The improved system has provided improved control, management information and audit functionality in relation to debt transactions.
I hope this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.
