Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Of the administration overspend, €11.5 million is going on pay, which covers the cost of increases in 2022 due under the Building Momentum public service agreement. There also has been an increase in the use of overtime to meet the additional demands on the Department's community welfare service arising from the cost-of-living crisis and the Ukraine crisis and to deal with significant volumes of other work, including PPS numbers, public service cards and SAFE registrations for same.

The primary reason for the administration overspend is an overspend of €20 million on medical certificates, which was primarily offset by the underspend of €9 million on IT external service provision under subhead A2(V) - office equipment and external IT services. We have seen a significant increase in medical certificate submissions in 2022. This can be attributed to surges in illness benefit cases due to Omicron and other variants of Covid-19. From April 2022, certificates were also required for Covid where previously HSE evidence had been accepted, which led to a further increase in submissions.

It is expected that seasonal illnesses such as flu, in addition to Covid-19, will lead to further increases for the remainder of the year.