Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 13 June 2019

Public Accounts Committee

2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 40 - Children and Youth Affairs

9:00 am

Ms Bernie McNally:

We have tried to improve everything incrementally in recent years, including rules and contracts. It is really only since 2017 that we have had a more robust process in place. That includes a three-year compliance framework. We very much work with the providers. Where a provider has made an overclaim, we give it the opportunity to dispute that and then we start to introduce penalties. Currently, the penalty is that in year 2, if we find non-compliance on a second visit, we can withdraw its programme support payment or refuse to offer it to the provider. That is the payment that amounts to €19.4 million annually. It is built into the compliance framework, contracts, etc. that we can refuse the provider access to that payment. That is a lot of money for small services. We can also refuse capital. We have fairly good capital available annually, and not being able to access that is certainly a sanction. The biggest sanction is that we are recouping it. If a provider has overclaimed, we go in and change the PIP registration so that if the provider is expecting to receive a couple of thousand euro the following week, it will not receive that due to having overclaimed. That is the biggest sanction. The programme support payments and the refusal of capital is the current provision. If at the end of the third year a provider remains non-compliant, we can withdraw its contract.

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