Dáil debates

Wednesday, 19 December 2018

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions

State Pensions

11:45 am

Photo of Regina DohertyRegina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy should not apologise for asking questions. I doubt that there is any Deputy in the House who does not meet women who ask the same questions at the weekend. I certainly do. Of the 79,000 who received a letter, we have completed a review of social insurance records for approximately 55,000. Therefore, there will be no need for us to interact with that cohort as the system is automated. However, one cannot automate everything on day one. The process will start in January and people will begin to receive notification, week by week, as we go through and complete cases.

Where people have gaps in their records, they are also very clear and obvious to us and they will receive a letter asking them to log on to the mywelfare.iepage to fill in the gaps or contact the local office to give it the information. It will be evident early in 2019 that people will start to receive not only their increased payments but also their backdated payments to March 2018. Those who have gaps in their records will be contacted where we cannot find an obvious explanation, for example, for missing contributions in 1972 or 1979 because we cannot match them with the PPS number of a child who was born in the same year. We have done all of the preparatory back-office work with individuals where we can. That is how we have been able to provide complete records for approximately 55,000 people.

Where we do not have those complete records, we will contact people very early in the new year and ask them to come forward. The Deputy will see movement. If somebody is at home and does not get a letter or payment by the middle of February, he or she should not worry. We took on 70 new staff to do this but there are 79,000 individual records. We have allocated for January, February and March.

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