Epidemic of over-payments to civil servants due to errors in centralised pay system

There is an epidemic of over-payments to staff in the Civil Service as a result of errors in a centralised pay and leave system introduced as a cost-saving measure in 2013, a major trade union conference has been told.

The Fórsa trade union Civil Service divisional conference in Killarney was told that on Thursday that civil servants who were over-paid as a result of failures in the "PeoplePoint" human resources shared services system had to give back the money within a year or less.

Fórsa official Derek Mullen said in one case a civil servant who had been over-paid for a period of time faced having to pay back €14,000.

“The problem of overpayments, which has reached epidemic proportions, is causing great suffering to many civil servants, including many in vulnerable financial circumstances, who have to repay money they do not have”.

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He said “extensive underpayments and unprecedented delays in paying people their correct salary once they are appointed or promoted” were also being experienced by staff.

“It’s difficult to identify a single aspect of PeoplePoint activity that has not given rise to problems,” Mr Mullen said.

Delegates at the conference debated nearly a dozen motions on the issue with some calling for the centralised shared service system to be scrapped and human resource services to be returned to Government departments.

A survey released at the conference showed that 83 per cent of civil servants who participated had experienced problems with the PeoplePoint system.

The union said that more than half of the 1,079 civil servants who responded to its survey said their pay had been affected by problems encountered with the PeoplePoint system. Another 18 per cent said their sick pay had been affected, and 6 per cent said pension payments had been hit.

The largest single problem encountered was overpayments (23 per cent), followed by problems with sick leave reconciliation (21 per cent), annual leave (19 per cent), payment of increments (17 per cent), pay adjustments following promotion (13.5 per cent), underpayments (9 per cent), pensions and parental leave (7 per cent each).”

Mr Mullen said the project, which was introduced in 2013 to save €2.5 million a year through staff cuts, was launched before it was ready. “The IT systems were not fully developed and service level agreements between PeoplePoint and line departments were unrealistic and lacked penalties.

“The staffing requirements were poorly understood, and the organisation had an overreliance on temporary staff from the outset. Our members in PeoplePoint also report a lack of adequate training for new staff who, with ever-increasing workloads, get little more than “on the job” instruction. As if the system is not difficult enough to navigate, staff aren’t being given the tools to do the job,” he said.

The National Shared Services Office which oversees the operation of the PeoplePoint system said it accepted that the service was not yet where it needed to be, to satisfy users and it “welcomed all feedback as we are absolutely committed to improving it”.

It said the estimated, unaudited, value of overpayments to the end of 2017 was €3.7 million.