Invalidity Pension

Pretzill

Hi all and anyone who has knowledge of this particularly;
Since the last budget Self Employed people are entitled to apply for Invalidity Pension if circumstances call for it.

In order to qualify, you must have 5 years paid PRSI contributions over your entire working life -
And 48 Contributions in the last or second last year before the date of the claim.

Now if you are self-employed and on disability allowance (bearing in mind people in self-employment don't qualify for benefit) for more than two years before your claim (which is entirely possible as it's only since December 2017 people could apply) you automatically don't qualify because you haven't enough stamps built up because well you've not been working and haven't paid any? So what happens then? I found this line on welfare.ie and don't really understand it;

Where a claimant has no reckonable contributions paid or credited for two consecutive years, that person is not entitled to the payment of Invalidity Pension until 26 qualifying contributions have been paid subsequently.

Does this mean they have to go back to work to pay the stamps or can they just pay for 26 stamps from January 2018 and then qualify?

I reckon a lot of self-employed people who have had no choice but to claim disability allowance won't qualify for an invalidity pension despite the government thinking they are giving some sort of concession. Anyone any thoughts?

splinter65

Pretzel the relevant tax years if applying for IP in 2018 are 15 and 16.
If you haven’t the PRSI contributionsor credits in either of those years then you won’t get IP.
It’s the same for everyone, employee or self employed.

Pretzill

splinter65 wrote: »

Pretzel the relevant tax years if applying for IP in 2018 are 15 and 16.
If you haven’t the PRSI contributionsor credits in either of those years then you won’t get IP.
It’s the same for everyone, employee or self employed.

The relevant tax years are 2017 & 2016 actually - I get that. What I'm trying to get across is that anyone who is self-employed and on disability allowance, since 2015 or before won't have enough contributions whereas an employee on benefit will have that contribution paid by their employer and can transfer to the invalidity pension, unfortunately voluntary contributions aren't taken into account either.