Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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1029. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the amount in arrears paid for recipients of the pandemic unemployment payment; the number of payments of arrears made; the number of these payments in which there was a delay in the applicant receiving their payment and they received backdated payments; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [15659/21]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) has proven to be a vital income support to workers, thousands of whom lost their jobs virtually overnight. Since the introduction of the scheme just under 20 million payments have been made to over 850,000 people providing income support of more than €6.3 billion to date. Over the last 12 months, just under 2 million PUP claims were received and processed.   

Arrears arise under the following broad headings. First, there may have been an initial time lag in the commencement of payments. Second, arrears may also arise in respect of individual weeks where claims could not be processed due to incomplete applications or data mismatches. Third, arrears may be due where the rate on a claim has been increased with retrospective effect.

In response to the first two issues, my Department developed an automated process, which examined each case and looked at their overall entitlement to payment and matched this against their payment history. As a result, 286,000 people received arrears payments totaling €129 million on 1 December 2020 for unpaid weeks in the period from March to November 2020 . My Department is working to ensure that this automated process can be efficiently replicated on an ongoing basis. Development work has concluded, and the project is at final test stage with a view to its deployment shortly. This project will ensure that where any new cases are due arrears in respect of any week since November 2020, for example,. because of claims arising following the introduction of Covid restrictions in late December, these arrears can be processed. As the necessary testing has not yet concluded, it is not possible to indicate the amount of arrears payments which will arise in respect of this project.

In relation to the third issue, cases have mainly emerged where new earnings data has been supplied to the Department or where earnings bands and earnings reference periods have been changed. In September 2020, approximately 15,000 individuals were due arrears of just under €10 million in respect of newly reported earnings, and these were paid at that time. In addition, in October 2020 just over 45,000 people were due arrears following changes to the earnings bands and associated reference periods introduced at that time. These arrears, totaling €14.7 million, were paid in February and March 2021.

In addition to the above, individual cases will arise where arrears may have to be awarded on a manual basis by my Department. However, given the overall number of persons in receipt of the Pandemic Unemployment Payment and the volume of associated transactions, manual processing of arrears payments on a wide scale is neither feasible nor efficient. I can assure the Deputy that my Department is fully committed to ensuring the prompt and timely processing of applications for the Pandemic Unemployment Payment.

I trust that this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.