There are 24 former Government ministers and civil servants who are yet to begin payment plans over incorrect pension deductions.<\/p>\n
Documents provided to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) show there is still \u20ac94,361 owed to the National Shared Service Office (NSSO).<\/p>\n
The NSSO confirmed last June that administrative errors resulted in current and former Government ministers and office holders having incorrect pension deductions applied.<\/p>\n
The update, provided to the committee in late March, shows there are still 24 former ministers and civil servants who have not engaged with the process.<\/p>\n
There were 82 individuals impacted by the pension deduction issue. So far 58 have begun a payment plan or have already paid in full. The NSSO previously confirmed that it had reached an agreement with all current senior and junior ministers.<\/p>\n
\u201cEngagement is ongoing with the remaining former ministers, office holders and civil service officers, with a further correspondence to issue by the end of March to those not yet in a payment plan,\u201d the note reads.<\/p>\n
Aidan Farrelly, Social Democrats TD and PAC member, said he was concerned about the number of former ministers who are yet to pay back the funds or start a payment plan.<\/p>\n
Mr Farrelly cited previous correspondence PAC has received, where the Department of Social Protection was classifying fraud cases involving sums of money less than \u20ac100.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhereas this seems to have been a very soft-hand approach to enforcement when it comes to getting payment plans set up for either former ministers for civil servants,\u201d Mr Farrelly said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat comparison needs to be made, because the Department of Health or hospitals are employing debt collectors to chase inpatient fees. There\u2019s a lot of people being chased for very small sums of money.<\/p>\n
\u201cYet, there\u2019s nearly \u20ac100,000 outstanding from people who are refusing [to engage].\u201d<\/p>\n
The Kildare North TD said he wanted to know if any former ministers are seeking to challenge the NSSO\u2019s contention and if this is why several have yet to pay.<\/p>\n
Asked if there should be a \u2018name and shame\u2019 approach, Mr Farrelly said this was caused by an administrative error.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one did anything wrong for this overpayment to happen, but I do think a period of time should be called on it. Whereby after a certain date, these records will be made public.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Farrelly said some former ministers may not have begun repayment plans due to a lack of concern over media scrutiny.<\/p>\n
Tadgh McNally is a political reporter for the Irish Examiner\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are 24 former Government ministers and civil servants who are yet to begin payment plans over incorrect…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408771,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[72,176,61,60,1558,174,175],"class_list":["post-408770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-pensions","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}