The Department of Social and Family Affairs has been forced to hire temporary staff in order to deal with a backlog of 20,000 claims made by EU migrant workers whose children are living in their home country.
Officials estimate the total cost of paying EU nationals child benefit and the €1,000-a-year childcare supplement for non-resident children will cost the State up to €140 million next year.
Under EU law, employees from any member state can claim child benefit in the country they are working in, even if their children are living in their home country.
The amount of money paid to children of migrant workers has proved politically controversial, with Fine Gael calling for the childcare supplement to be changed to exclude payments to children of EU migrant workers living abroad.
However, the Attorney General has advised the Cabinet that any attempt to discriminate between Irish and EU workers in the payment of child subsidies would be illegal under EU law.
Officials say it is taking up to 15 months to process claims from EU nationals for child benefit. In contrast, it takes a number of days to process claims for children born in Ireland.
The department recently recruited 10 extra staff, including fluent Polish speakers, to help process the backlog. It hopes to have cleared the backlog by midway through next year.
The majority of claims are from Polish nationals and citizens from other eastern European member states.
It makes financial sense for most EU accession state migrant workers to apply for child benefit in Ireland given that we have one of the most generous child payments available in the EU.
Child benefit rates in Ireland (about €160 a month) and the new childcare supplement (€1,000 annually or €83 a month) are much higher than equivalent benefits in many former accession states such as Poland (€11 a month) and Latvia (€9). It is more in Lithuania (€27), but varies depending on income, while in Slovenia it is €16-€90.
Child benefit is paid to about 3,000 EU nationals whose children are living in their home country. Most of these children reside in the UK or Poland.
However, the vast majority of applications for child benefit for non-resident children over the last two years have not been processed. Before payment of child benefit or childcare supplement, officials must contact authorities in the country of residency of the children to confirm details and establish if the claim is legitimate.
If there was no backlog of claims, officials say the procedure would take at least six months. This is because of paperwork at home and delays in getting answers to inquiries made to authorities in other member states. Further information may subsequently be required from the customer, so the process can be a prolonged one.
Meanwhile, there is a separate backlog of about 6,000 claims for non-Irish children born outside the State who are now resident in Ireland.
Theses cases are taking about six months to process, according to officials, because welfare claimants must show that they are habitually resident here, while checks are made with other bodies to confirm their status in the State.
About 43,700 EU nationals currently receive child benefit for 75,400 children who live with them in Ireland.
