Written answers

Tuesday, 1 December 2020

Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection

Covid-19 Pandemic Unemployment Payment

Photo of Denis NaughtenDenis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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472. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if pandemic unemployment payment recipients will receive all arrears in 2020; if assurances will be provided that if arrears are delayed until 2021 that it will not have an impact on the tax liability; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [39683/20]

Photo of Heather HumphreysHeather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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Since the introduction of the Pandemic Unemployment Payment scheme in March, approximately 815,000 people have applied for payment and in some cases, they have done so on a number of occasions as they moved in and out of employment or where their employer availed of the Revenue Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme. Consequently, there are over 1.4 million applications to be examined to determine if arrears are due. To date, over 13 million individual payments have issued over a 36 week period.

Arrears in respect of the Pandemic Unemployment Payment will arise under two broad headings. Firstly, there may have been an initial time lag in the commencement of payments. During the month of March, the Department of Social Protection received and processed jobseeker claims equivalent in number to a three year claim-load. Almost 59,000 people were paid in the first week of the scheme, increasing to 283,000 people in the following week and over 507,000 people in the third week of the scheme. The focus was on putting claims into payment as quickly as possible was and it was not possible to generate arrears payments at the time. Secondly, arrears may also arise in respect of individual weeks where claims could not be processed due to incomplete applications or data mismatches.

The Department is keenly aware that many people are due some arrears and that every case will be different. In order to address an issue of this scale, the Department has developed an automated process, which examines each case and looks at their overall entitlement to payment and matches this against their payment history. The work involved is complex as the Pandemic Unemployment Payment system itself evolved from a manual applications system to one where applications were submitted online and paid over two different payment platforms (one from March to July and the second from July to date). Final testing and implementation of the automated process is currently underway. It is intended that payments in respect of identified cases will issue on 1 December.

The tax treatment of any arrears of the Pandemic Unemployment Payment is a matter for the Revenue Commissioners.

I hope that this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.

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