NI parents caught in UK crackdown lose child benefit after travelling via Dublin | Northern Ireland

Parents in Northern Ireland have had their child support payments stopped as part of the UK government’s crackdown on alleged benefit fraud simply because they returned from a holiday at Dublin airport.

So far, aid for 346 families has been frozen. An investigation by NI online newspaper The DetailHe discovered something shared with the Guardian.

The extraordinary mistake emerged in the wake of a new anti-fraud system designed to track down those who left the country but did not return after eight weeks, raising a red flag at HMRC over possible immigration.

The problem in Northern Ireland is that many families routinely fly from Belfast and return via Dublin, which is often cheaper and offers many more flights, leaving HMRC with the impression that a passenger has not returned.

Because there is no passport control at the Irish border, the government has no data to suggest a traveler may have returned to Northern Ireland by car or by bus or train.

Among those whose benefits were stopped were Mark Toal, an NHS nurse in Belfast, and his wife Louise.

They went to England for a holiday with their two children, aged 17 and 13, via Dublin airport in 2022. It cost £10 to get to Ireland’s capital by bus and flights were cheaper.

To his shock and surprise, on 10 October this year, HMRC wrote to him informing him that his child benefit had been stopped. Their decision appeared to be based on data showing they were flying from England to Dublin; this flight was actually their return trip.

“We have information indicating that you left the UK and traveled to Ireland on 15 August 2022. This was over eight weeks ago and we have no record of your return,” the letter said.

Toal couldn’t believe what he was reading. “I was on the phone with them [HMRC] I’ve been trying to figure this out for 45 minutes. “I was angry, very angry, my blood was boiling,” he said.

Toal, who told HMRC that he had not left the country and was living in Northern Ireland, hoped for some sympathy.

Instead he faced a barrage of 70 questions; These include a request for a boarding pass dating back three years, three months’ worth of bank statements and letters from her children’s school and hospital records.

He was also asked if he was an adoptive or biological parent.

“I told them that I have been paying taxes to the UK government for the last 30 years, that I have not had an address for 23 years, and that I have been working in the same job since 2016,” Toal said.

“Will I be asked to do all this again every time I go to Dublin Airport from England, Scotland or Wales? Will I have to send them a letter saying ‘please don’t cut my child benefit’?”

Maria, who asked that her real name not be used, received a similar letter from HMRC on October 9 after leaving the UK in Belfast and returning to Northern Ireland via Dublin after a short holiday in Italy in May.

When Maria protested, she too was faced with a long list of demands to prove her residence in Northern Ireland.

“We tried to decline the obligation to provide all these documents, but they said it was not within our purview, that you had to submit the documents because the department was very strict.

“To be honest, I felt very tired. I literally felt like I was in a Kafkaesque process.”

HMRC’s move follows a crackdown by the government in August to “save £350 million” on fraudulent benefit claims.

But Northern Irish MPs accused HMRC of failing to take into account the difference with Great Britain and the fact that there is an invisible border with the Republic with no passport controls due to the 1998 peace agreement.

“Having a basic understanding of the north might give them pause,” said Newry and Armagh Sinn Féin MP Dáire Hughes, who represents 14 families whose benefits have been frozen. “This would clearly be outside the Home Office’s purview.”

Hughes said HMRC’s action was causing “distress” to “families who have done nothing wrong”. He described the new system as “not fit for purpose”.

South Belfast MP Claire Hanna, leader of the SDLP party, called on HMRC to explain where they got their data from and why they used it as evidence of suspected fraud. When there were no flights to Belfast after the votes were held late in the evening, he personally used Dublin airport to return from Westminster.

“This is another policy that does not take into account the realities of life on the island of Ireland,” he said.

“Many families will use Dublin airport for one or more parts of their journey, in fact for many NI residents it is closer than Belfast international airport.

“We need to have full transparency about what data HMRC accesses so that families do not face the loss of this benefit or piles of unnecessary red tape.”

HMRC apologized for its error but said it would continue to carry out checks. “We regret that child benefit payments have been inadvertently suspended for a small number of customers in Northern Ireland,” the statement said.

He added that “payments were restarted and investigations against 134 people were closed.”

While the investigations were ongoing, the payments of 46 families were restarted, while the payments of 166 families were suspended while the investigations were continuing.