SOCIAL WELFARE PAYMENTS worth over €115 million were found to have been wrongly paid to citizens last year, with six people having received more than €200,000 in benefit payments they were not entitled to.

The Department of Social Protection said they had recovered €87.3 million worth of overpayments last year, with 78,714 individual customers left with a repayment bill.

The department said there were a variety of reasons for overpayments including genuine errors by claimants or welfare staff, as well as deliberate bogus claims.

In one case, a person was paid an enormous €271,046 they weren’t eligible for through a non-contributory state pension.

Another person received €265,484 that they will have to repay after claims under the same state pension scheme.

There was another over-payment of €236,934 to an individual through the non-contributory state pension, which is paid at a rate of between €266 and €276 per week depending on age.

The fourth highest over-payment was made to an individual who wrongly claimed €227,904 in jobseekers’ allowance, a payment generally worth €232 per week.
One person was paid more than €222,000 they were not entitled to under the scheme for disability allowance.

There were five further over-payments of between €189,245 and €215,309, all of which related to the non-contributory state pension.

At least some of these overclaims are thought to relate to collection of pension payments where the person who was actually entitled to welfare had died.

The Department of Social Protection said the total amount of overpayments discovered last year was €115.7 million, although some of this may have been a result of “irregular payments” over an extended period.

A sum of €87.3 million was recovered in 2023 but again, those debts may have related to incorrect claims that were made in earlier years.

A spokesperson the Department of Social Protection said: “Overpayments of social welfare entitlements can occur for a number of reasons, including through error on the part of either the applicant or the Department or where a person has provided false or misleading information.

“Those who have been overpaid social welfare have a liability to refund the overpayment in full as they have been in receipt of a payment to which they were not entitled.”