Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 18 January 2024
Public Accounts Committee
Appropriation Accounts 2022
Vote 37 - Social Protection
Social Insurance Fund 2022
Report on the Accounts of the Public Services 2022
Chapter 13 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 14 - Ex gratia Payments of €1.4 million to Social Welfare Branch Managers
Chapter 15 - Raising Social Welfare Overpayments
Chapter 16 - Recovery of Welfare Overpayments
Chapter 17 - Actuarial Review of the Social Insurance Fund
9:30 am
Mr. John McKeon:
The Chair asked what we think the percentage is. At this point, my sense is it is somewhere between 1% to 5% of people who are own-account self-employed workers. It might be up to 10%. We need to let the unit work for a while and see what that percentage comes out at. If it is at the lower end, that would indicate, purely from a social insurance perspective, that the value of investing more resources to generate extra social insurance revenue would probably be fairly low. If it is at the higher end, we probably need to expand it. We need to leave it for the time being and let it run for the next year or so.