Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 7 November 2019
Public Accounts Committee
2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Employment Affairs and Social Protection
Chapter 12 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 13 - Timeliness of Income Support Claim Processing
Chapter 14 - Customer Service - Development of Income Support Application Forms
9:00 am
Mr. John McKeon:
We do two things. Until this year, we concentrated on sending reminder letters to people who had already disclosed means. For example, they were on reduced pensions. Every year, we wrote to them asking whether their circumstances had changed. We did not send reminder letters to people who had nil means, though, as we did not anticipate that their circumstances would change. From this year on, we will pick out 10,000 of those cases and write to them.