Irish Child Benefit Data Protection Issue

nikkifusion

I have a very strange scenario that I’m wondering if anyone has come across. (For the record my husband, children and I are all Irish and at this point had lived in Ireland our whole lives)

Last year I returned the child benefit form that asks you to confirm that your children still live in Ireland and attend school etc etc. We were leaving Ireland to live abroad and I stated this on the form. Child benefit payments stopped as I expected they would and I thought no more about it.

4 months later, said form was sent back to me in the post from the UK Child Benefit Department! No letter, just the form in an envelope, stamped and marked from the UK child benefit with a case number. (I should point out, we weren’t moving to the UK, nor even staying in the EU and I have no recent or past connection to the UK)

I couldn’t, and still can’t fathom why the UK would have my child benefit declaration form and why they would return it to me!! I called the Irish Child Benefit dept to find out what was going on but they completely fobbed me off and said An Post must have delivered it in error to the UK instead of Donegal! (I’m guessing hundreds of thousands of these forms get sent each year but mine apparently the only one in the history of time to be sent to the UK!)

This doesn’t sit well and I am very suspicious. I don’t believe that An Post are that incompetent that my letter made it all the way through the Irish and English postal services to be delivered to the UK. But the Irish Child Benefit insist that they have no dealing with the UK and no reason why my form would end up in the UK.

In an unwelcome twist, Irish Child Benefit are now claiming that as they never received my form, I was overpaid child benefit as they didn’t stop payments when I left the country!

Has anyone ever had anything similar happen in regards to the form being returned to them from the UK??

TIA

pwurple

What form was in the envelope from the UK? Was it your original one, with a case number?

Is there any chance you sent the Irish form to the UK address in error, and they simply returned it to you?