Woman told she owed €20,000 for ‘overpaid’ welfare payments

A woman who was told she owed the Department of Social Protection nearly €20,000 in overpaid welfare payments ended up getting a refund of €700 after she contacted the Ombudsman.

Publishing his annual report for 2016, Peter Tyndall said he had noticed in 2015 and 2016 an increase in the number of complaints from welfare recipients who had received notice from the department that they had been overpaid. The department was demanding repayment from them.

Mr Tyndall said the periods during which the alleged overpayments had accrued ranged from relatively recently to more than 20 years ago. The amounts were from €1,000 to over €100,000.

“An examination of these complaints raised significant concerns so I decided to initiate a systemic examination of the department’s processes in raising and collecting overpayment debts from claimants.”

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Out of 55 overpayment complaints examined, his office has finalised 25 of the cases and upheld 15 of them. The overpayments were written off by the department.

‘Position of power’

Mr Tyndall said the department could withhold up to 15 per cent of a person’s benefit, which was “a great position of power to be in”.

“Clearly if you are living on the poverty line, on the bare minimum benefit, having your benefit cut by 15 per cent is a very serious issue,” he said.

“This remains an outstanding issue. They would take the view that if the State is owed the money, then the State should have the money. We would take the view that if you put somebody in this position, it’s up to you to sort it out. It shouldn’t be their problem.”

Mr Tyndall’s office is working with the department to introduce national guidelines to get consistency in the way the issue is dealt with.

His office is also close to finalising an investigation into how the child and family agency Tusla handles complaints about child protection issues. It commenced a systemic investigation into Tusla’s processes last June.

The investigation is particularly looking at how Tusla deals with allegations of child sex abuse made against adults.

“We believe that they need to be processed independently, objectively and, above all, promptly so that either if they are upheld that the proper child protection measures are taken, and if they’re not upheld that the person’s name is cleared promptly,” Mr Tyndall said.

National policy

Mr Tyndall said the investigation resulted from a series of complaints to his office where it had received assurances from Tusla that there would be a national policy in place for dealing with such cases.

“We found that we were getting subsequent cases where it was evident that those assurances were not being delivered on in practice. We had inconsistent practice around the country in dealing with issues and we had evidence that some areas of the country were refusing to follow central practice, for whatever reason. So we felt we had to escalate the matter at that point.”

The ombudsman welcomed the fact that this year he been able to take complaints for the first time from people living in direct provision centres. The office has had about 14 complaints about direct provision since April, including issues about the weekly allowance, accommodation, food, a lack of replies to correspondence and access to healthcare.

Case studies: Hospital information system mistakenly recorded man as threat

A man complained to the ombudsman after a security guard was called to be present with him when he attended the emergency department of Mayo University Hospital. He discovered it was because information, which said he was a threat to staff, had been recorded on the hospital’s electronic patient information system.

The hospital could not explain why the information was on its computer system or identify who put it there because it had not recorded who made the entry. It was clear the man had never been a threat to staff. The hospital apologised to him and removed the information.

The general manager of the hospital sent a memo to staff in the relevant departments highlighting the issue of inappropriate use of computer fields.

The ombudsman accepted the hospital had responded appropriately to the complaint.

SUSI

In another case, a student complained to the ombudsman when her application for a means-tested student grant was refused by Student Universal Support Ireland (SUSI).

The income of an applicant’s parent or guardian can be considered in assessing household income. However, in this case, SUSI said the income of the girl’s stepfather could not be included as a stepfather was not included in the definition of “parent or guardian” in its legislation.

The student said the grant was designed to support students from low-income households and students from households with exactly the same means would be eligible for the grant if their natural parents were still married and living together.

Following the ombudsman’s discussions with the Department of Social Protection and the Department of Education and Skills, the student was awarded a payment of €2,890.