Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 9 December 2021

Public Accounts Committee

2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Social Protection
Chapter 9 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 10 - Management of Social Welfare Appeals
Chapter 11 - Controls Over the Covid-19 Pandemic Unemployment Payment

9:30 am

Mr. John McKeon:

We were always using it to a certain extent but, as I explained earlier, our initial data-sharing agreement with the Revenue Commissioners was on a case-by-case basis, single individual by single individual. Since we got the second ICT system built and put the data sharing agreement in place we have been using it much more regularly. We have been using it much more regularly since the summer of this year, but at the moment all claims of PUP are being checked against the real-time look-up system and all claims that are in payment that are being checked against it on a weekly basis.