They know it’s fraud, but apply ...and go again if turned down

The whistleblower who says that the Pandemic Unemployment Payment has been the subject of massive fraud tells us why they came forward to speak out.

I JUST couldn’t stand by and watch the Department of Employment and Social Protection waste millions of euro by processing fraudulent claims.

They’re paying everyone the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP), without utilising a real-time data match with Revenue.

This is allowing thousands of people who are either employed or have never made a contribution in their lives to slip past the system and claim the emergency payment.

The department was under an enormous amount of pressure at the start of this pandemic to support people who had lost their jobs.

And, given the scale of this operation, it would have been fair to give them a week or two to do the necessary checks.

But there are still so many people who are taking advantage of how easy it is to receive PUP.

Some members of the public are applying on a whim, thinking: ‘I’m not sure if I’m entitled to this payment or not, but if it goes through, it goes through, and if it’s stopped, it’s stopped.’

Others know full well that they’re not entitled to it and if their payment is stopped they’re just applying for it again.

The simple fact is that the department is losing millions because its systems aren’t automatically detecting if a person is already employed.

Ideally, once an applicant provides their PPS number, the department should be instantly notified to state whether the individual is entitled to PUP. It’s well established that Ireland is facing a massive recession due to the fallout of Covid-19.

You would think that the Government would be trying to save as much money as possible, to minimise the economic downturn down the line, but this just isn’t happening.

On every computer in the department there is what’s known as a ‘Real Time Lookup’ for Revenue.

A member of staff can manually look up someone and see if they are being paid by their employer.

There are now many employees doing independent data samples to prove to management that the level of fraud is out of control.

For example, I know someone who processed 30 applications in the first week of the pandemic. This person then manually looked back at them recently and had to stop six payments.

The department is also sending officers to airports to question people who are leaving the country while still receiving

PUP.

Recently, 150 people bound for Romania were stopped before they got on their flight, where it was subsequently discovered that 100 of them were receiving this emergency payment.

The whole thing is falling apart and it seems as though the department is digging a bigger hole for itself, the longer this mess goes on.

Based on this information, along with accounts from other department sources, I believe that 10% to 20% of all PUP claims are fraudulent.