Universal Credit benefits claims rocket by 80% in eight weeks across Northern Ireland

Deirdre Hargey said the jump – from a claimant caseload of 70,000 on March 1 to 126,000 by April 26 – was a sign of “the scale of job losses here”.

The News Letter asked her department what the associated cost increase of all the new claimants had been.

It did not provide a figure, but said that in November the average monthly amount awarded was £660.

The following is a crude method of putting the spending in context, but if this £660 figure was multiplied by 70,000, then it makes for a monthly payout of £46.2m. And multiplying 126,000 claimants by £660 would give a monthly expenditure of £83.2m – an increase of £37m.

Universal Credit has been brought in across the UK over the last few years.

It rolled things like Housing Benefit, Employment and Support Allowance, Jobseeker’s Allowance and other benefits into one (meanwhile Personal Independence Payments have replaced Disability Living Allowance).

Ms Hargey said in a statement: “The number of claims to Universal Credit during this crisis has been unprecedented and demonstrate the scale of the issues people are facing surrounding work...

“Despite these unprecedented numbers, my department was able to make 99.1% of all payments due over that period on time.”

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