HMRC is re-checking thousands of child benefit suspensions after a data‑matching drive wrongly flagged parents as having left the UK for good. The problem has hit Northern Ireland hardest, where families who flew out of Belfast and returned via Dublin were recorded as one‑way travellers. The tax authority has apologised and begun reviewing 23,500 cases, after complaints poured in from parents across the UK.

On the ground, the story is familiar. Belfast nurse Mark Toal was told his family had “left the UK” and faced a long list of demands to prove otherwise, all because they returned from a holiday via Dublin. Sinn Féin’s Dáire Hughes called the system “not fit for purpose”, urging Whitehall to respect how people actually travel on the island. The Irish Times first set out the scale of the issue, with 346 Northern Irish families caught up.

Ministers launched the anti‑fraud push on 22 August 2025, touting savings of £350m over five years. A specialist team matched 200,000 child benefit records with international travel data after a pilot that officials said had saved £17m. Payments can stop if a parent is abroad for more than eight weeks, but the new checks assumed missing return records meant people had moved away.

That assumption collides with the Common Travel Area. There are no routine passport checks on the land border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, and UK arrivals from within the CTA are not subject to routine immigration control. So a parent who flies back into Dublin and drives home to Newry or Derry can look, on paper, like they never returned to the UK.

After a wave of complaints, HMRC paused suspensions on 29 October and said it would contact claimants first, introduce a one‑month grace period, and cross‑check Home Office travel records against PAYE data before making any decision. A dedicated team is now handling cases so payments can be restored quickly where someone clearly never left.

Fresh figures published on 9 November show how far off the system was. Almost half of families flagged in the pilot-46%-were still living in the UK, and in Northern Ireland 78% of the families highlighted had in fact returned. HMRC has now stopped using data from Dublin Airport to infer fraud and says checks will be tightened.

Parliament has stepped in. Dame Meg Hillier, who chairs the Treasury Committee, has written to HMRC demanding a full account of what went wrong and what safeguards are being put in place. The committee wants clarity on how parents ended up treated like absconders over routine travel, and how cases will be put right.

This isn’t just a Belfast story. MPs in the North West report constituents affected, and The Guardian has tracked letters landing well beyond the border counties. Where families travel out via one UK airport and re‑enter through Ireland-then continue to Britain by sea or air-there may be no UK ‘return’ record at all. That gap is baked into CTA rules, which is why employment or school records are often a better test of residency than flight data alone.

HMRC says affected parents should call the number printed on the letter they received. Under the revised approach there is now time to respond before any suspension, with HMRC checking PAYE and other evidence first; where payments have been stopped in error, the department says they will be restored and backdated.

For families and finance directors alike, the takeaway is simple: cross‑border travel is routine in our part of the UK, and policy needs to reflect that. The fix is already under way-scrap ‘one‑way’ assumptions, rely on employment and school evidence, and stop penalising parents for cheaper flights through Dublin. With the Treasury Committee on the case, HMRC’s review now needs to deliver answers as well as refunds.