Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 18 January 2024

Public Accounts Committee

Appropriation Accounts 2022
Vote 37 - Social Protection
Social Insurance Fund 2022
Report on the Accounts of the Public Services 2022
Chapter 13 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 14 - Ex gratia Payments of €1.4 million to Social Welfare Branch Managers
Chapter 15 - Raising Social Welfare Overpayments
Chapter 16 - Recovery of Welfare Overpayments
Chapter 17 - Actuarial Review of the Social Insurance Fund

9:30 am

Mr. John McKeon:

One thing I would say, and the Deputy will see this in the chapter, is that the rate varies between schemes. In the case of some schemes, we are up at 8%, so we need to have a look at those schemes in particular and review them. The overpayment rates on the schemes where the rate is higher tend to be lower. On the jobseeker's allowance, for example, it is a couple of hundred euro, whereas on pensions, for which there is a lower rate, it is a couple of thousand euro. We need to have a look at those schemes and we are continually looking at them to try to identify the risk factors. We do not want to get back to a situation such as in the case of the jobseeker's allowance where everybody had to turn up every week and sign on. We just do not like that kind of mentality, if I can put it that way, but we have to get better at identifying the risk factors and use our analytics capability to do that.

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