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:

Yes. We will be looking at extending it. I explained some of the difficulties in terms of reconciling different payment frequencies in that some people are paid in advance, others are paid in arrears and so on. We are getting to grips with all of that now. One of the issues which people may not have noticed the Government has asked us to consider, which is in the pathways to work strategy, is that we move jobseeker payments onto a working family payment type model. Rather that having the casual system which we have at the moment, which some people will be familiar with is about days on work and days off work, we would use the Revenue real-time system to give us information on a person's earnings, which we would then top-up. A person with no earnings would get the full payment, a person with some earnings might get a reduced payment and so on. It is a bit like the working family payment, which, at the moment, is only available to families. That is something we are looking at, but it is not without its challenges. That would be a good way to use it, I think.