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 would not say so. I have the figures here and the Deputy can see them in chapter 4 of the Comptroller and Auditor General's report. The overpayment on supplementary welfare allowance was 2.6%, so it is generally in line. What I would say about the supplementary welfare allowance is that it is administered by experienced and senior staff at higher executive officer grade in the Department. That is deliberately because it is a payment which is made using discretion. Most of our scheme payments are authorised at clerical officer level but for this scheme, because there is discretion vested in the person rather than it being predominantly rules based, we have staff who are experienced and well trained operating it. They are supervised and we do control reviews and our internal auditor looks at it. There are a lot of tight controls on it.