Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Department is not in a position to write off overpayments. This is something that Deputies who are members of the Committee of Public Accounts might take up with the Comptroller and Auditor General because, in its annual report, the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General calculates all overpayments going back into the mists of time. There is no arrangement to write off overpayments. The annual report is regularly very critical of the accounting officer of the Department if overpayments are not recovered.

In respect of the current situation, I can furnish the Deputies with a table if they are interested. The table indicates that overpayments in 2012 amounted to €97 million. Of that, suspected fraud accounted for €41 million, while customer third-party error - that is, instances in which people made mistakes and there was no apparent deception - accounted for €35.8 million. Departmental error amounted to €7.6 million, and moneys recovered from the estates of deceased persons where it emerged from wills and so forth that the means and savings of the individual exceeded the qualifying criteria for certain Departmental payments amounted to €12.5 million.

Under the current arrangements, the Department writes to the person who has been overpaid and that person has the right to make representations. We take many factors into account when seeking to recover overpayments, as Deputy O'Dea knows well. He has, for example, made representations on behalf of constituents who were ill and we have suspended the collection of monies owing.

The Department is not at liberty to do what the Deputy is suggesting - namely, to write off the debt. However, we do try to make the repayment recovery schedule proportionate and to take into account the person's circumstances, based on the information he or she makes available to us.

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