Much of the €2m overpaid to gardaí will be written off

GARDAÍ have been overpaid by almost €2m in pay and pensions but the force does not have enough staff available to get the money back. An internal audit report has revealed that chunks of the money will end up being written off because of difficulties in recovering it.

The report on financial controls was prepared for Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan and has now been obtained under Freedom of Information.

It said there were not enough staff to recoup the money. At one stage, nobody was responsible for collecting the money owed.

The internal auditors said the figure had grown substantially in recent years as closer scrutiny of the payroll had begun. This suggests that the true scale of overpayment may well be even higher while virtually no effort was being made to get it back.

The report, from March of this year, explained that the ‘Recoupment Unit’ had at one stage been beefed up following a critical internal audit. However, by October 2016, nobody was working there. Later, only one half-time position was allocated.

The report said: ‘It is likely that write-offs for some of this debt will be required but every effort should be made to recoup as much of this as possible.’

It said the overpayments had occurred for a variety of reasons.

Overall, €1.9m was found to have been overpaid, an increase from the previous year’s overpayment of more than €375,000.

The Garda Press Office said overpayments of salaries and pensions were notified to human resources on a quarterly basis.

It added: ‘The pursuit of overpayments of garda pensions is a matter for the Department of Justice’s Financial Shared Services Centre.

‘An Garda Síochána has established an Overpayments Management Unit. When an overpayment of a garda salary is notified, the… unit liaises with the employee, informing them of the overpayment and arranging for its recovery.’