The latest review by the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) has covered a broad range of subjects, such as housing delivery, the levy on plastic bags, the Pandemic Unemployment Payment, and the costs of concert and race event policing.
With regards to the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP), the Social Welfare Department has highlighted between 50,000 to 60,000 instances where it appears that claimants were also remitting employment taxes, the C&AG review stated. A review of PUP records and those from Revenue is still ongoing, which includes comparative analysis of 30 million PUP payments on a weekly basis against Revenue data up to June 2024. Almost 6,600 people to date have been approached to begin refunding these incorrectly disbursed funds.
The overall PUP payments between 2020 and 2022 amounted to an estimated €9.2 billion. By the end of last year, overpayments had reached approximately €55.5 million, about 0.6 percent of the total amount disbursed, from which €13 million has already been reclaimed.
The reported cost for policing at for-profit events like large-scale concerts isn’t fully offset by the event organisers, the review found. The Policing bill for the Harry Styles performance at Slane Castle in the previous year exceeded the €207,180 charged to the event promoter by nearly €67,000. Similarly, there were discrepancies for the Galway Races and the Punchestown Racing Festival in Kildare, with shortfalls of €23,000 and €36,000 respectively. Normal public duty may sometimes coincide with non-public duties in the course of risk management duties carried out by An Garda Síochána, as addressed in the C&AG review.
In addition, the C&AG report noted the price of modular homes for Ukrainians surged to €442,000 per unit.
Dunne Stores, in a prolonged litigation that ended earlier this year, handed over €5 million to conclude a plastic bag tax requisition of €36.6 million, first introduced by Revenue in 2009. The taxes were re-evaluated and decreased significantly, in light of a Supreme Court ruling in 2019 which went against Dunne Stores in a case linked to the legislation that supported the tax. According to the CA&G report, once Dunnes Stores analysis of the tax was taken into account, it was evident that it had been exaggerated by over 75%.
Given the risks associated with legal proceedings, Revenue resolved to accept Dunnes’s proposal to settle for €5 million, a figure which was far less than the original taxation request of €8.5 million after its initial reduction.
On a different note, the report also addressed an eight-year-old housing measure that apparently failed to expedite the provision of housing projects as anticipated. The Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund (LIHAF), which was implemented in 2016, was aimed at getting rid of obstacles to housing development in promising areas by addressing infrastructural impediments.
Approximately 30 construction projects were expected to be accomplished by 2021, contributing to the creation of nearly 20,000 housing units. However, by the end of last year, only 6,418 units had been realised. Despite this, it was reported that the Department of Housing remains hopeful that the initial LIHAF housing goals will eventually be met.