Written answers

Tuesday, 8 December 2020

Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection

Social Welfare Payments Waiting Times

Photo of Patricia RyanPatricia Ryan (Kildare South, Sinn Fein)
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373. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the number of persons awaiting payment of arrears from her Department for more than two, four, six and eight months, respectively; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [41075/20]

Photo of Heather HumphreysHeather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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In a typical year, My Department processes in excess of 2.5 million customer service applications per annum and issues about 87 million payments each year to 2.2 million customers and their families.

Arrears in respect of a claim can arise either on the initial award of a claim or where there is a retrospective increase in the rate payable. In many cases, these arrears will be processed automatically as part of the decision process. Where manual intervention is required to calculate and process arrears, this normally takes place as quickly as possible.

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 were over 1.4 million applications to be examined to determine if arrears are due. To date, almost 14 million individual payments have issued since the commencement of the scheme.

I am pleased to advise the Deputy that over €129 million in arrears in respect of the Pandemic Unemployment Payment was paid out to 286,000 people on Tuesday 1st December.

I hope that this clarifies the matter for the Deputy. 

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