Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 20 October 2016
Public Accounts Committee
2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Department of Social Protection
Chapter 9 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 10 - Roll-out of the Public Services Card
Social Insurance Fund 2015
9:00 am
Ms Niamh O'Donoghue:
The reason for that is we moved from the old to the new system where there was a reconciliation of the recoveries made in cash with recoveries made automatically from scheme payments. We are working to reconcile the reports across a number of our systems, including the accounting system and the debt recovery system. Local offices, Intreo offices, complete reports on a monthly basis on the amounts of cash held by them. There was a discrepancy of about €54,000 at the end of December; they showed a cash on hand figure of €68,000 compared to the accounting system which showed a cash on hand figure of €122,000. There is a difference of somewhere in the order of €50,000. We are working to identify the reason. It is about the transition from the old to the new system and reconciling information from two accounting systems.