Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 12 November 2020

Public Accounts Committee

2019 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 – Employment Affairs and Social Protection
Chapter 4 – Control over Welfare Payments

11:30 am

Mr. John McKeon:

No. I do not want to get into it. It is a bit more complex than that. It is not that simple. It was a genuine human error by a very experienced officer who actually would be a superstar in our IT world.

On the €12.2 million, we have already recovered more than €5 million of that and there are plans in place for that. We are not finding any difficulty in recovering it because most people we paid at the time knew what we were doing and the clients understood. We are not encountering any difficulty there. We suspended the recovery of repayments at the beginning of the year when Covid-19 happened. When Covid-19 is finally clear, we will go back to the recovery but we fully expect to get the money back. People were aware they were being overpaid.