Thousands of social welfare payments delayed

Thousands of social welfare recipients face delays in their payments due to a “once off processing issue”.

Some 32,700 people who were due to receive their payments directly into their bank accounts today, will not receive their payments until tomorrow, a statement issued by the Department of Social Protection said.

“Due to a once off processing issue, social welfare payments which are made by electronic funds transfer to a person’s nominated bank account will be credited one day later than normal,” the statement said.

“The Department of Social Protection very much regrets this delay and apologises for any inconvenience caused to customers.”

The payments involved are the illness benefit, the domiciliary care allowance, jobseekers benefit and jobseeker’s allowance, the occupational injuries benefit, partial capacity benefit, farm assist, back to work allowance, supplementary welfare allowance, back to school clothing and footwear allowance, family income supplement, back to education allowance, one parent family payment, JobBridge, pre-retirement allowance and maternity benefit

The department said payments will be in customer bank accounts by 8am tomorrow.

Department spokesman Sean Reilly said the number of people affected was a small proportion of the 1.6 million welfare payments made every week. “The vast, vast majority of payments to our customers are not affected,” he said.

Mr Reilly said the delay was not caused by a technical problem but a processing fault between the department and the banks. “On this one occasion there was a confusion between ourselves and the bank,” he said. “It was certainly nothing to do with systems and no technical issue.”