Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)

People are quite worried about this. We are seeing reports that one civil servant was apparently overpaid by €280,000. The 19 former and existing senior civil servants received overpayments worth €1.4 million. I hope measures are being put in place to make sure this does not happen again. The fact that it happened in the first place is shocking. When I raised it with the Minister at a committee he said he had no concerns about recouping the money. However, when his Department was in front of the Committee of Public Accounts last week it did not seem to be certain of the timeline. It is my understanding that it was pointed out that some of these people will have 20 years to repay the money, which is a very long time. I am concerned that we will not be able to recoup all this money. This has been a major blunder.

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