Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:

The Department work continues to work with PeoplePoint and the Payroll Shared Service Centre to minimise the number of overpayments. This is part of the overall shared service for payments in the Civil Service. We are still in the relatively early years of this shared service and we continue to have difficulties with the timing of informing and updating PeoplePoint and the Payroll Shared Service Centre. It is really around the information flows and enhancing those to the largest extent possible. We have been working on this in partnership with the shared services. This has been assisted by the publication of the circular on public service bodies and the recovery of payments from staff, which sets out the administrative arrangements for the overpayments made to staff working in various public service bodies made by PeoplePoint.

Overpayments in 2016 provisionally stand at €335,000 with a total of 135 cases. We have been working on those and we have recoupment plans in place for all 51 of those. We are working on the rest now.