Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour)
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140. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if there have been widespread delays in payments for individuals such as a person (details supplied) who participated in the Easter supplementary programme and is still awaiting payment from her Department for work done; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [47141/21]

Josepha Madigan (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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A total of 14,179 payment claims have been received from parents under the Supplementary Programme. Closing date for applications was 14 May 2021.

Under the programme, parents sourced a teacher and when the delivery of tuition was complete, they submitted a claim to the Department for the payment of the teacher or SNA who delivered the additional 5 hours tuition/support per week.  

Payment claims were paper based and processing involves keying all the claims into a data base, follow up with some parents regarding queries on the claim, errors and missing information.  A dedicated team of staff was put in place for this work.

A commitment was made to pay all claims in August and most were.  At the end of August, there were outstanding queries in respect of 184 claims of which 168 have now been resolved successfully and payment will issue on 14th of October.  This includes the tutor referred to by the Deputy.

The reason for the overrun in respect of a small number of claims is due to the fact that applications for payment were incomplete or incorrect information was provided.

There are still queries outstanding in respect of 16 claims and these are being followed up.