Recovery of Social Welfare Disability Benefit

I am unsure if my question is relevant here or not so excuse me if I have made a mistake. I'm new!

I received a letter last week from my employer saying that there was an internal audit and they saw that I was absent from work for a week in March 2004. First time ever sick in 8 years!!!

I was quite ill at the time and had a doctors cert. However they now tell me that I have to pay back the money I received for the week I was out sick. They told me to contact the social welfare office in Dundalk for a form so that I can make an application for social welfare payment for the period of absence.

(I am paying A1 PRSI by the way)

A few questions here..

1. In future when if I am off work due to illness what do I do? Who do I contact? I don't want this to happen again
2. Must I pay my employer and then claim the money back from social welfare?
3. Is there a time span for claiming? I mean this happened in 2004?
4. Do you think I will be able to pay in installments?

Sorry for all the stupid questions but I really haven't a clue and would appreciate all any help/advice you could give me.

Thanks a milliion

Jenny

My wife was in your situation a couple of years ago- had a blemish free attendance record at work, was sick for a week and a few weeks later got a letter like yours. Basically if you are off work for more than 2 days in future you need to go to your doctor to have them sign a special cert, when you are ready to return to work they must sign a different cert. These documents are returned by you to the Dept. of Social Welfare. You can nominate payment of the disability benefit to yourself directly or to your employer- if they are paying you while out sick. I had ocassion to avail of this payment myself this year and like you I was new to all this. That said your employer is only trying to recover monies which you are entitled to through your PRSI contributions.

At this stage I dont think your employer can look for this money back. The payment of wages act I think gives a period of 6 months in which an employee must be informed of an over payment and arrangements can be made to pay it back. After the 6 months, you are under no obligation to pay it back. You could probably still get social welfare sick pay for 2 days (the first three are unpaid on social welfare) and had this over to your employer.

Thanks PB,

I see from the [broken link removed].

5
(2)
(vii) ........the first such deduction is made not later than 6 months after the act or omission becomes known to the employer............

In this case the omission only came to light as a result of an audit over a year later.

aj