Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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160. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the total amount paid out by her Department in pandemic unemployment overpayments as a result of fraudulent applications. [41862/24]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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Overpayments of social welfare entitlements can occur where a person provides false or misleading information in their application or through error on the part of either the claimant or the Department. Persons who have been overpaid social welfare have a liability to refund the overpayment as they have been in receipt of a payment to which they were not entitled.

Cases involving fraudulent or suspected fraudulent activity arise where a deciding officer is satisfied that there is sufficient evidence that a person deliberately provided false or misleading information or willfully concealed relevant information in relation to their entitlement. The Deputy will appreciate that there is a high evidential standard to be met in such cases.

To date, just over 34,000 Pandemic Unemployment Payments (PUP) overpayments have been assessed by my department to a value of €85.2m, with €21.8m recovered. Of these, c.1,350 PUP overpayments were considered to have arisen because of suspected fraud, and overpayments have been raised in these cases to a value of €6.2m with recoveries of €1.08m.

I trust that this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.