Social Welfare employee claimed deserted wives benefit while living with partner

A WOMAN employed by the Department of Social Protection claimed almost €190k in deserted wife's benefit while living with another partner for more than 20 years, Trim Circuit Court heard.

Anne Byrne (64), Mornington Court, Mornington, Co Meath, pleaded guilty to the theft of €188,295.99 from the Dept of Employment Affairs and Social Protection between November 1997 and April 2019 and a charge of falsely declaring in March 2016 that she was still entitled to deserted wife's benefit.

The defendant, who had spent over 40 years working in the Social Welfare Department, originally applied for the benefit in 1989 following the break-up of her marriage in 1980, but continued to collect the payments after she began living with her partner in 1997, Garda Denise Clancy told prosecuting counsel Carl Hanahoe BL.

The defendant's case was reviewed in 2016 and she confirmed there had been no change in her circumstances and her offending only came to light two years later when she and her partner completed a registration form of their intention to marry, the garda added.

The court heard that following Byrne's arrest in April 2019, all of the money had since been repaid and included a sum of €72,577.50 from her pension gratuity as she had been due to retire that year, as well as some of the proceeds from the sale of a house she owned in Raheny.

A defence barrister told the court his client was “riddled with shame” for her actions, which had not been “preplanned or premeditated acts of criminality”. He added that Byrne had not claimed the benefit which she was entitled to for eight years before 1989 “because she did not know she could claim”.

Judge Martina Baxter who described the case at the “upper end of offending” directed the preparation of a probation report and remanded the defendant on bail for sentence in April.