It comes ahead of the Christmas bonus being paid to welfare recipients.
More than a quarter of a million people were paid PUP money they might not have been expecting this morning.
The payments consisted of €129 million in arrears payments, which were made to 286 thousand people across the country.
It comes ahead of the Christmas bonus being paid to welfare recipients next week.
The government estimates that the two payments will pump half a billion euro into the economy over the next few weeks.
Speaking earlier today, Social Protection Minister Heather Humphreys explained what happened.
''If you think back to last March 820,000 people applied for the PUP, and there were many cases were there was insufficient information to process their claim'', she said.
''The priority was to get them into payment as quickly as possible and look at the arrears later.
''So my department examined a total of 1.4 million applications to check if arrears were due''.
Meanwhile, more than 350 thousand people were paid PUP today - with 90,000 of those likely to return to work this week as the economy re-open.
Shops, gyms and hairdressers were among the retailers reopening this morning as level three COVID-19 restrictions came into effect.
However people are still being asked to stay in their county apart from work, education, medical and other essential purposes.
These travel restrictions will be eased on December 18th, when people will be allowed to travel freely around the country.
