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:

We have moved to pretty much 97% to 98% of claims coming in online. A lot of claims can be processed without human intervention. Last week, we paid 343,000 claims. Less than 1% of them were held and we generally pay within a week. The PUP is paid on a payment week basis. Claims which are received and processed before Thursday one week are paid on Tuesday the following week. If they are received and processed on a Friday, they are paid on Tuesday the week after that again. They are generally paid within a week if they go through the system correctly. Where they do not go through the system correctly, we communicate with the people involved, explain why the payment was not paid and give them the contact details of where they can get in contact with us if they need to provide more information and so on.