Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank all the Deputies for raising this issue. It is something I am very aware of from my own constituency office. This week, 200 additional people have been moved into the section that works on PPS numbers. Deputies can understand that getting money in people's pockets in terms of the PUP was an absolute priority. Then people were depending on arrears to come. Some people were owed arrears, mainly because insufficient information had come in and we could not process the claims. Then we got the information, processed the claims and they went through 1.6 million applications. This week we have paid out arrears to 286,000 people, totalling €130 million.

That will give some idea of the volume of work that the Department of Social Protection has been dealing with. I accept there have been delays with PPS numbers but Deputies will be glad to hear that more staff are going into it. It is a priority for us to try to process them as quickly as possible. If there are any specific cases the Deputies want to bring to my attention, I will be happy to deal with them. We are doing everything we can and the staff are working as hard as they can to get this dealt with.

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