Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 12 November 2020

Public Accounts Committee

2019 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 – Employment Affairs and Social Protection
Chapter 4 – Control over Welfare Payments

11:30 am

Mr. John McKeon:

We are conscious of that. As I said, last week it was 1% of claims, just to put it in that context. As I said, in response to one of the earlier questions, when we first introduced PUP, we were limited in the control checks we could implement. We have now implemented a measure where we check with the Revenue records to see if a person has paid either employee or self-employed PRSI and to see if he or she was in employment and had lost a job. In some cases, people who got payment last March do not have the evidence to support that when they come and claim again. In most cases, in the 1%, it is self-employed people. In most of those cases, it is because they probably have not filed their self-employed returns, or if they have done in some cases, they have filed their self-employed returns with earnings of less than €5,000, which means they did not pay any social insurance contributions. In those cases, they do not get the €350 they got last March, they get €203, because their taxable income does not justify paying €350 per week, it now pays €203.

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