Families who returned to Northern Ireland via Dublin Airport have found themselves penalised. File photograph: Joel Carillet/Getty Images
Some parents in Northern Ireland have had their child support payments stopped in error. The fault lies with the UK government’s crackdown on alleged benefit fraud, with parents being penalised simply because they returned from a holiday via Dublin Airport.
So far, 346 families have had their benefits frozen. The discovery was made in an investigation by The Detail, a Northern Irish news site .
The new anti-fraud system is designed to track those who leave the country but do not come back after eight weeks. Failure to return in this time period raises a red flag at HMRC, the UK revenue service, for possible emigration.
This system is problematic in No
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