Eight employees at a company in Co Donegal have pleaded guilty to fraud after they exploited a loophole to print off their own Covid-19 certs and defraud more than €65,000 from the Government.
Thirty-four employees made dozens of illegal Enhanced Illness Benefit claims while still turning up for work and claiming their full salaries.
The Department of Social Protection decided to consider prosecutions in the 34 cases and imposed a cut-off point of an overpayment value of €1,000, which left 15 employees under investigation.
A total of nine cases are being pursued through the courts, with eight employees pleading guilty, while summonses have yet to be served on the ninth employee.
The eight employees, all resident across the border in Derry, appeared before Buncrana District Court where they pleaded guilty to the fraud.
All of the employees living in Northern Ireland were able to claim the Covid-19 payments after they discovered they did not have to have any proof of medical intervention for their claims.
They were able to log onto a National Health Service (NHS) website and print off a certificate of self-isolation.
Dozens of the certs were then sent by the accused on various occasions between March 2020 and December 2021 to the Department of Social Protection to claim the Enhanced Illness Benefit Payment.
This allowed the employees to receive further payments under the scheme of €350 per week while claiming their full salaries.
Normally, Illness Benefit supports people who cannot work in the short term because they are sick or ill.
The Enhanced Illness Benefit was introduced on a temporary basis as a public health measure in response to the pandemic.
Rates of payments were higher at €350 per week instead of €208, and were available to people who had tested positive for Covid-19 or had been told to isolate on medical grounds.
Word of the scam spread when one employee realised he did not have to show any legitimate medical proof of isolation and told fellow workers of the loophole during canteen breaks.
The fraud came to light when staff in the Control Section of the Illness Benefit scheme spotted an unusual increase in such claims from individual employees of the company, sparking the investigation by inspectors in the Inishowen Special Investigation Unit.
The investigators said the company wherethe employees worked knew nothing of the scam and cooperated fully with the investigation.
Judge Éiteáin Cunningham accepted the pleas in a number of cases and issued fines to the offenders after hearing various payment plans to pay back the money to the Department of Social Protection were now in place.
Judge Cunningham said: "I'm really not impressed. The Government went out of their way to assist families in need over the pandemic period and I'm really not impressed with this."
The illegal claims ranged from between just over €290 to almost €5,000, amounting in a total overpayment of €65,113.48.
It is understood that the Department of Social Protection has opened files on other possible similar breaches made by employees of companies along the border during the pandemic.
