The Ombudsman says some people were placed in 'extreme poverty' by the recovery of social-welfare overpayments.
Peter Tyndall investigated the issue because of a big increase in complaints.
Almost half of the 108 complaints relating to social welfare received by the Ombudsman between 2015 and 2018 were upheld.
He claims the Department of Social Protection didn't deal fairly with recovering overpayments, in a significant number of cases.
He says this placed many people well below the poverty line, in one case a man found out he owed 17 thousand euro when he applied for an invalidity pension in 2016.
