Nearly 10% of people who claimed the Pandemic Unemployment Benefit were not eligible for the Covid related benefit, a review has found.
The review found that in just under half of these cases reviewed where the recipient was ineligible for the payment, the person was claiming the PUP while still working.
The report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) released on Thursday showed that in one quarter of the cases, there was no evidence that the claimant had been working prior to the pandemic.
Another quarter of ineligible claimants were found to have originally been eligible, but continued claiming the payment after returning to work.
The report, which was based on a sample of PUP claimants, found that the emergency social welfare payment introduced in response to the Covid crisis cost almost €5 billion last year alone.
The review said: "In 31 or 9.4% of the cases reviewed, there was evidence the claimant was not entitled to the payment in the week examined."
Some €14.5 million PUP overpayments had been identified by the Department of Social Protection by the end of August 2021, relating to 4,300 claims, the C&AG report found.
It comes after 1.75 million applications for the PUP were made to the department between March 2020 and February 2021.
It recommends that the department should review PUP cases “to ensure all overpayments are captured", as Dublin Live reports.
The report said "analysis of overpayments detected, including sectoral trends, should be used to inform retrospective reviews, where appropriate, of claims that have already been closed".
“The department did not attempt to verify the ‘genuinely seeking work’ aspect of PUP eligibility criteria in 2020 other than to establish a dedicated telephone line for reporting of such cases by employers,” it added.
