HMRC crackdown wrongly targets Northern Irish families using Dublin Airport

Families in Northern Ireland have had their Child Benefit payments stopped simply because they flew through Dublin Airport.

Under a new UK government crackdown, comparing HMRC child benefit records with Home Office international travel data, families' decision to use Dublin Airport meant they were mistakenly flagged as having gone abroad and fraudulently claiming benefits.

The extraordinary blunder by UK tax authorities shows no understanding of freedom of movement on the island of Ireland or the Good Friday Agreement which has meant no checks on the Irish border, an MP has said.

Earlier this month hundreds of families in Northern Ireland received HMRC letters informing that their Child Benefit payments had been stopped.

Maria*, originally from Italy and a naturalised British citizen living in Belfast, received a letter after she took a short holiday back to Italy in May this year.

The system flagged her as fraudulent after she flew out of Belfast but returned via Dublin airport.

Because there are UK passport checks on the land border, the Home Office had no record of her return journey to Northern Ireland, and marked her as having moved abroad.

“We have information that shows that you left the UK on 19 May 2025 and travelled to Italy. This was more than eight weeks ago, and we have no record of your return,” the HMRC letter read.

She was asked to fill out a 12-page form including demands for three months of bank statements, letters from her child’s school and hospital records.

Maria said she is in full-time employment and a simple check of her PAYE tax records would show that she was still living and working in Northern Ireland, but she was told she still had to complete the form and gather the documents.

Questions ranged from the sensitive to the benign - asking if she was her child's adoptive or biological parent - to queries about family pets.

“I felt it’s ridiculous, why are they doing this now? Where is this coming from?

“There are so many documents to collect, my son’s school, my own office, it just felt a nuisance. And I happened to have the details of my travel because it was recent, otherwise I might not have the proof for that travel.

“I felt exhausted to be honest,” she said after engaging with HMRC about their error.

“I told them my son hadn't travelled with me, he was in school, 98% attendance. It didn’t make sense.

“We tried to push back on having to provide all these documents, but they said this is not within our remit, you have to send the documentation because that department is very strict.

“I felt like I was literally in a Kafkaesque process,” said Maria, who asked us not to use her real name.

Mark Toal, an NHS worker in Belfast, also received a letter from the tax authorities this month telling him to fill in a form with more than 70 questions.

“I was on the phone to them [HMRC] for 45 minutes trying to sort this out,” he said.

“I did lose my temper, I was very annoyed, it boiled my blood.

“I pointed out to them that I have been paying tax to the UK government for the past 30 years, and I haven’t moved address in 23 years, and been working in the same job since 2016.”

Mr Toal and his wife Louise and their two children, aged 17 and 13, had travelled to England in 2022 via Dublin Airport for a holiday because it was cheaper to get a bus to the Irish capital and fly from there.

But Home Office data for their return journey, showing the family had left England for Dublin, raised a flag on HMRC’s system that they had moved abroad.

Mr Toal was also asked to provide the boarding passes from three years ago, which he had long discarded.

“It is less expensive to fly (from England) to Dublin and get a bus, rather than fly to Belfast,” he said.

“There’s no border control, it is not as if I can tell someone at the border, Hello I’m back home,” he added.

“Will every time I travel from England, Scotland or Wales from Dublin airport will I be asked for all this again? Will I have to send them a letter saying ‘please don’t stop my child benefit,” he asked.

Distress

Many in Northern Ireland regularly use Dublin Airport for cheaper and more frequent flights. A direct bus to Belfast takes under two hours and costs around £10 each way.

Dáire Hughes, Sinn Féin MP for Newry and Armagh, who is representing 14 families, said the mistake goes to the wider issue of Northern Ireland being overlooked by London civil servants and politicians.

“A basic understanding of the North would give them pause,” he said, referring to the fact that Dublin Airport is the island's largest and most popular airport.

“That would obviously be outside of the gaze of the Home Office,” he said of Dublin's travel data.

He said there was “a fair degree of distress being caused to families who have done nothing wrong” by a new system that may work for Britain but was “not fit for purpose” in Northern Ireland.

The UK government has been checking Child Benefit records with international travel data to detect fraudulent claims since August, which they said would ‘save £350 million’. A pilot scheme checked 200,000 records and stopped payments to 2,600 people, a rate of 1.3%

Mr Hughes and his fellow Sinn Féin MPs recently wrote to Hilary Benn MP, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and Daniel Tomlinson MP, Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury.

“It is abundantly clear that the practice of HMRC using Home Office data to monitor families’ travel arrangements is completely flawed when it comes to citizens in the north of Ireland,” it read.

HMRC has apologised for its error, but indicated it would continue to do checks.

The families and Mr Hughes have called for HMRC to change their systems to avoid further nightmare for law-abiding citizens in Northern Ireland.

A spokesman for HMRC said they have reinstated payments to 180 families so far.

They said they will now check PAYE records before suspending Child Benefit, and will conduct extra checks before stopping payments for those travelling to the Republic of Ireland.

However they did not respond to queries on how they will handle situations where the family has flown from Belfast and back via Dublin.

“We’re sorry that a small number of customers in Northern Ireland have mistakenly had their Child Benefit payments suspended,” the spokesman said.

“We’re working to contact them so their claims can be reinstated and they are not left out of pocket.”