It could happen if there was an overlap between credits and contributions. cfor instance, if you claimed, say Illness Benefit from SW and your employer topped up with salary/wages, youn would get credits for the SW claim and your employer would pay PRSI/ 'stamp' for the top-up he paid to you
There was one year, I think 78/79 in which up to 66 contributions were awarded. I think it had something to do with the change over of the SW year to line up with the tax year which at that time was April 6th to April 5th.
The same thing occurred in reverse in 2001 when the Tax year was lined up with the SW year and 2001 only awarded 39 contributions but SW added 14 credits to complete the records.
BTW Welfaite As I understand it SW will not award a credit if you have a contribution in the same week, but I'm open to correction
You're absolutely right but this is only corrected after inverstigation that there is no fraud involved; the computer automatically will 'credit' the record and this triggers investigation. Then the record will be amended when all is in order. In pre-computer days (1979), it was harder to pick up on such 'errors' so there probably areanomolies on such records still sitting there