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:

It will only take me a few seconds to respond to this last element. Employers pay people in advance, in arrears, weekly, fortnightly or monthly and having submitted returns they then submit corrections. Relying on those and for an employer to deny people a PUP payment where there may have been a data issue with the real-time look-up information would have been problematic. We have ironed out all these matters and we now do that now in real time. We not only do that when awarding claims we also do weekly checks.