Woman seeks to overturn finding she was overpaid nearly €20,000 under Covid-19 scheme

A refugee has brought a High Court action seeking to overturn a finding that she was overpaid by some €20,000 under the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) scheme.

Mr Justice Charles Meenan made an order on Monday temporarily preventing the Minister for Social Protection from pursuing repayment of €19,850 from the woman, who cannot be named due to her refugee status.

The order will remain in place until the woman’s legal case is resolved unless the Minister applies to court seeking to set it aside. The Georgian national, who worked part-time as a cleaner, was paid the sum from March 2020 until May of last year.

The court heard she is challenging the legality of some of the rules governing the payment, which was introduced as part of the emergency response to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

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She wants the court to declare a PUP rule purporting to preclude part-time employees was not compatible with a section of the Social Welfare Consolidation Act of 2005. The payment was geared toward people who lost all of their work due to Covid-19 restrictions.

When the pandemic began the woman was working for two cleaning services on a part-time basis. She says she made three applications for the PUP scheme during the spring of 2020 when her employment status was “in flux”.

In her first and third applications she stated that she was in part-time employment, while in the second application she declared she was not in employment, as at this time her work had ceased due to the pandemic. She said she subsequently recovered some hours, so felt obliged to submit a third application saying this.

Did not conceal

She says she did not conceal any pertinent facts or details and the deciding officer had all the facts in front of him. In June of last year the woman was told she was overpaid by €19,850, a finding that was upheld on review by the chief appeals officer.

The woman claims her appeal against the Minister’s decision was forcibly withdrawn as the decision was deemed not amenable to appeal and is subject only to review. This, she says, is based on an incorrect understanding of the 2005 Act.

Due to this, she alleges the PUP scheme is unconstitutional, as it does not provide a full range of protections, including an independent appeal process, that is provided for under the 2005 Act. While the Minister treats the PUP scheme as a payment under section 202 of the 2005 Act, its conditions are “wholly different”, she claims.

The woman says €40 was deducted each week from her Job Seeker’s Allowance payments that she received from March to June of this year. She commenced full-time employment in July.

Mr Justice Meenan ordered that the Minister and chief appeals officer must be informed about the action, which is to return to court in February. Only the woman was notified of and legally represented at the court on Monday, so the judge gave the Minister permission to apply to the court to seek to vary his order temporarily preventing the pursuit of the disputed debt.