Asylum seekers who wrongly received payments from the State will not have to return the money due to serious lapses in controls by the Department of Social Protection The Department has confirmed it will not seek to recoup extra monies paid to asylum seekers as means-testing will only begin next month. A damning audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General found serious lapses in controls of these payments, while the Social Protection Minister was warned that failing to act on legislation passed in 2018 was costing the State close to €11million annually in over-payments. The audit by the State spending watchdog, and obtained by the Mail , reveals that in mid-2022, weekly payments to asylum seekers were made electronically directly into applicants’ bank accounts, rather than being collected in post offices.
Another control measure that meant asylum seekers were only eligible to claim for an allowance if they were living in a ‘designated centre’ was dropped by the department at a time when the number of asylum seekers arriving into Ireland soared. The audit by the Comptroller & Auditor General (C&AG) has stated that the department was ‘not in compliance with its statutory responsibilities in operating the scheme’. It also stressed that ‘the department has not conducted any means assessments of claimants – [and] the value of irregular payments cannot therefore be established’.
The department said it no longer has the capacity to complete the checks on all desig.