Carer benefit overpayments ‘scandal’ hits 5,000 people in NI, figures reveal

It comes after Carers NI recently revealed that £9 million of Carer’s Allowance overpayments have been referred to the Department for Communities’ Debt Management branch since 2021 due to local carers breaching weekly earnings rules. One local carer told Carers NI that they’re afraid they’ll lose their home after going over the earnings cap by just a few pounds per week and receiving a demand to pay back over £4,000.

Carer’s Allowance is the main welfare benefit for those providing unpaid care for sick or disabled loved ones in Northern Ireland. Claimants can bring in a small amount of additional income each week and still keep their Carer’s Allowance payment, which is currently worth £81.90 per week, but MLAs and campaigners have said the earnings rules are too complicated and leave many people building up significant overpayment debts after inadvertently going over the weekly limit.

The average overpayment being clawed back by Stormont last year was over £1,600 – more than 30% of the value of Carer’s Allowance for a whole year.

Craig Harrison, Public Affairs Manager at Carers NI, said: “These new figures reveal the staggering scale of the Carer’s Allowance overpayments scandal in Northern Ireland. Nearly one in every 10 claimants of the benefit here are being pursued for overpayments which, we can confidentially guess in a lot of cases, were entirely inadvertent and driven by the complexity of the earnings rules. Hunger and hardship will surely follow as many struggle to pay the money back.”

The scandal was highlighted in the Assembly chamber by the Alliance Party’s Sian Mulholland this week. The North Antrim MLA said in a statement in the Assembly that the Carer’s Allowance earnings rules were “opaque, complex and make it incredibly challenging for carers to stay within the limits… For many carers, these overpayments represent a significant financial burden, often pushing them further info hardship.”

Last week, Stormont’s Communities Committee also voted to write to Minister Gordon Lyons and demand answers on why his Department isn’t doing more to stop carers building up overpayment debts.