Mr. John McKeon:

We have spent a great deal of time on this over the past year. We have made some progress since the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report. We have invested a lot of time in analysing and cross-checking all recipients of the pandemic unemployment payment week by week. We made 30 million payments, all of which we have cross-checked with weekly employment records. The number where there is an overlap with employment has increased significantly as a consequence of this detailed analysis. We are looking at between 50,000 and 60,000 cases where there was an overlap between receipt of the pandemic unemployment payment and employment. In some cases, the overlap was legitimate. For example, the pandemic unemployment payment was paid on a full-week basis, so if someone went back to work on a Monday, the legislation meant that he or she still got the payment for that week. There is some filtering still to be done, but our cautious estimate is that, if every overpayment was due to a legitimate overlap, it would account for approximately €200 million. It will not work out at that amount, but we are we setting up a unit in our offices in Sligo that will spend the next year contacting all the people involved and checking the situation with them.