Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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89. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection her plans to ensure that all those in receipt of the pandemic unemployment payment who are due arrears receive the arrears before Christmas 2020; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [40747/20]

Heather 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 will examine each case and look at their overall entitlement to payment and match 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).

As PUP claim processing was prioritised in the Department with most claims being paid within a week the majority of PUP claimants (about 66%) are not due any arrears. However in cases where there were delays in issuing the payment or where claims were submitted late (about 34% of cases) some arrears may be due.

I am pleased to inform the Deputy that this week, in addition to the normal weekly PUP payments, the Department of Social Protection has started the process of paying arrears of the Pandemic Unemployment Payment with payments valued at €129.2m issuing to approximately 286,000 people.

The vast majority of arrears cases are being paid today. However, there are a smaller number of cases, and numbering less than 6,000, where the Department is continuing to examine records and any arrears that may be due in these cases will be paid as soon as possible.

I trust that this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.