# Please help - re contributory pensions



## boxdog11 (16 Feb 2010)

Hi,
I'm just wondering if theres anyone out there who has heard of anything like this happening before. Basically, my Mum and Dad are in their seventies. Dad was a farmer and had prsi payments so qualified for the contributory pension when he came to retirement age and Mum also received a pension as a qualifying adult. To cut a long story short my mother, a few weeks ago, was sent ten years (backdated) worth of means test forms to be filled in with all their financial details and of course she is frantic about it. She didn't tell me (or anyone else) about it until the forms were filled out but I know she has gone through hell to try and fill them out to the best of her ability. I am really afraid for them now as, even though they don't have much in the line of actual money, they do have insurance policies and stocks (the kind of stocks lots of people of a certain age would have but never use...) which have upped and downed in value over the last 10 years and I am really afraid they could be hit with a huge bill for all the payments she received in the last ten years. They are in a state over this and to be honest it sounds ridiculous to me to send out these forms for the last ten years - surely if a mistake was made then it was the departments mistake and I don't know what to do. I am not sanctioned by my Mum to email or contact anyone about it as she is horrified at the thought that they might owe these gangsters money. I think that this is just preying on the older generation and wonder if this is happening as a result of a mess up with the state contributory pension for farmers wives. 
Has anyone out there ever heard of anything like this? Can someone really be hit with 10 years worth of backdated means test forms? Surely if a form was supposed to be filled in ten years ago then it should have been filled in then. I am so scared that my parents could be hit with a gigantic bill and they are so honest they will sell everything they have to pay it off. If I could raise hell about this believe me I would but my parents won’t sanction me to do anything about it and I know they won’t go to a TD or anything like that about it either. They wouldn’t even go to see an accountant / solicitor. I am tearing my hair out here and would really love some advice or help with this. I have, of course tried ringing the social welfare offices about it but guess what they are not answering their phones, they’re well able to type up nasty / threatening letters to old people but they can’t be bothered to answer the phones or have the manners to help their victims out with their queries. Some country we live in for sure…….
Any help / advice / prior knowledge of something of this nature would be greatly appreciated. (I have posted this on boards.ie also but said I'd try here as well....)


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## Ann1 (16 Feb 2010)

[QUOTE Surely if a form was supposed to be filled in ten years ago then it should have been filled in then. [/QUOTE]
Your father would have filled in the original application form for his Contributors Pension. He would also have claimed for your mum as an adult dependent. These forms have a section asking if the adult dependent has additional income and if so the applicant is requested to state the source of that income. If no additional income was declared then the adult dependent claimed by your dad would have been paid in full.
The adult dependent payment on a contributors pension is means tested.
http://www.welfare.ie/EN/Schemes/Pension/Pages/oapc.aspx


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## Apollo (17 Feb 2010)

http://www.welfare.ie/EN/Publications/SW118/Documents/sw118.pdf


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## Welfarite (17 Feb 2010)

This s in the wrong forum. Try posting in Welfare and Benefits. Ann1 is right. If SW are now investigating a 10 year old claim, it may be to clarify a poosible irregularity from the original claim about your mother's income at the time. By means-testing your mother's income from that time they are trying to ensure fairness; see the quote below. The 'mistake' may have been your father's. Putting the blame on SW for issuing 'threatening letters' (what exactly do you mean here?)  is not very fair. Their job is to ensure that the taxpayers' money is spend correctly and they have to establish your mother's income position in orer to do this. 
And they are not answering phones due to industrial action over paycuts, so complain to your TD about that.

This from www.welfare.ie :
*Increase in pension for a Qualified Adult*

This is payable in respect of a spouse who is being financially maintained and whose income is not greater than a specified limit (currently 300.00*). Spouse is defined as a husband, wife, or partner - this includes a husband or wife divorced by the pensioner.
** Note: *where the spouse's income is not more than 100.00 a week, the full relevant rate of qualified adult increase is payable. Where the spouse's income is more than 100.00 a week but not more than 300.00 a week, reduced rates of qualified adult increase are payable.


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## coquito (17 Feb 2010)

This is not your ordinary situation. This more than likely has to do with self employed and PRSI because of the reference to her father being a farmer. The IFA came to an agreement with the minister re spouses who never worked off the family farm and PRSI. This is a little complicated. Farmers were not allowed to pay PRSI originally then around 1988 (I may be wrong on this date) farmers were allowed to pay PRSI the same as any other worker which then entitled them to a contributory pension but the same did not apply to the spouse who was not allowed to pay PRSI contributions even though in most cases she was a partner in the business ie farming. The situation has now arisen that women have reached the pension age, have applied for same, have back payed the PRSI as requested by the department and have then been refused the pension. I am one of those people. I was approved for a contributory pension early last year and then out of the blue last month I got a letter telling me that I was not entitled to the pension. I called our accountant, I called Social Welfare and the IFA, Mary Sherry deals with this, and was able to prove my case and had my pension restored but I do know that there are many women out there who were not as fortunate. This is disgraceful and has caused stress to a lot of people. Those of you out there who don't farm may not understand where we're coming from on this but believe me it is very difficult to keep the show on the road in this game and the pension is a huge help because most farmers wives are always scrimping and scraping to keep bills payed and and really have very little money to handle themselves. Your parents have to get help on this one. They really should have had help filling out the forms. I hope you get it sorted. Good Luck.


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## boxdog11 (17 Feb 2010)

Coquito, thanks for your response. It looks like you're the only one here with empathy towards this situation. 

Welfarite, as for your response. It was a threatening letter. My parents are country people in their seventies and like a lot of people of that generation, they are extremely religious and honest to a fault and that is 100% true so basically they filled out the forms that were necessary when dad reached pension age as honestly as they could. They had no idea about the follow up means tests and indeed it was up to the department to send out these forms (if required) and also they should have sent out an inspector to do the test with my parents if the means test was necessary. This is not my parents error and while it's fine for you to think that they if they received money in error that it's their fault, there's a big difference in not recieving the money for qualifying adult (or part thereof) in the first place and having the threat of being hit for a huge lump sum over something which isn't their fault / mistake so have a bit of empathy please. 

As regards your comment about non answering phones, industrial action over paycuts etc., my heart bleeds..... don't bother trying to defend this action, I'm doing the work of three people at the moment, no union, no safety nets, no pension - so I don't support it. All these people are doing are hurting the most vulnerable members of our society, hospital patients, seniors etc. My mother could contact noone in social welfare pensions dept. on receipt of this letter and it contributed greatly to her stress about this so like I said, my heart bleeds......

Ann1, thanks for your response too and I reiterate what I said above about my parents filling out everything correctly at the time and that they had no idea about follow up means tests. I have spoken to various people in citizens advice etc and they all say these forms are very tough and there is no way my parents are at fault in this, that follow on forms should have been sent out if required and an inspector sent out to my mum and dad to do the means test with them. That never happened (and even now that they sent out 10 years of backdated forms there was no mention of an inspector so it has all been done wrong on the part of the department).

Apollo - thanks for the link. Much appreciated.

Coquito, thanks again. It's amazing how little empathy people have for the older members of society and especially farmers so it's nice to see someone on here who's been through the pension debacle and come through the other side. I know my mum communicates with the IFA about this and I would love to be sending emails to politicians, letters to papers etc to bring this in to the public forum but my Mum won't hear of it and it's hard to get noticed if you can't use your name!!! This is a problem affecting a very small amount of older people and maybe because of age and the habit of keeping problems to themselves and just getting on with things it's not being highlighted. Mores the pity. Thanks again.


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## Gervan (17 Feb 2010)

The test is on your mother's "income" so unless the insurance policies have paid out to her, or she has received substantial dividend income from stocks held in her name, they don't figure. 
Money in the bank is "deemed" to provide a certain income, but you say they have little in the bank. Even then, it would have to be in her name or joint names. 
It could well be, with "people of a certain age" as you say, that all the financial holdings are in your father's name.


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## circle (17 Feb 2010)

Sarah Carey's article in today's Irish Times seems relevant to your situation: [broken link removed]


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## asdfg (17 Feb 2010)

My understanding is that the first 20K of assets (cash) is disregarded see below 

From Welfare site 

How do you assess capital?
Capital refers to savings, investments, shares, cash-on-hand and the value of property (except your own home). When working out your means from capital, a special formula is used to work out your means:


Capital:Weekly means assessed:

First €20,000...........................................................Nil

€20,000 - €30,000............................................€1 per €1,000

€30,000 - €40,000............................................€2 per €1,000

Over €40,000...................................................€4 per €1,000


so unless you have over 40K there is little to worry about and even then your pension will be reduced. 

Lets say you have 50K pension will be reduced by 10+20+40=70 per week


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## Papercut (18 Feb 2010)

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander….an old country farming community saying…….

  It’s a bit hypocritical to come on to a forum & demand empathy/sympathy for your parents when you can’t find a way to do likewise for hundreds & thousands of public servants who are parents, soon to be parents, or for their offspring or families IMO. 

  You posed a question. You got answers. There is no guarantee that you will like these answers or opinions, but such is the way on a public forum & it works both ways, so it would probably be in your best interest to bear this in mind.

  You have stated that Citizens Advice have informed you that DSFA are in the wrong, so if they are confident that this is the case they should also have advised you on your best course of action & provided any assistance possible. If you feel that they have misinformed you, or you are not satisfied with service provided, you could make a complaint via their website or by post.

  I would think that it would be highly unlikely that DSFA would send official letters unless they had reason to do so, & considering their present workload & other pressures I’d also doubt very much as if someone somewhere decided to initiate a witch-hunt on your parents, though I could be wrong. My point is that there must have been a valid reason for them to do so, & your parents are entitled to a full explanation. 

  Strangers posting messages of empathy or sympathy are not going to solve your problem. The IFA should be well versed in what avenues you can take to address the issue. They can put pressure on politicians, organise marches & demonstrations etc. You can also contact your local TD & have him/her raise the question to Minister Hanafin in the Dáil. It happens all the time – have a look through http://www.kildarestreet.com/search/?s=farmers+spouses+pensions & you might even come across a similar situation. You can also lodge a complaint on the DSFA website www.welfare.ie or by post. You can contact Mary Hanafin directly yourself. You can contact Brendan Smith via the website http://www.agriculture.gov.ie/ You can bring the situation to the attention of local or national media without your parents’ names being mentioned (similar to the Irish Times article linked to in an earlier post). 

  If you follow through on any of the above suggestions you may get the matter resolved, or at least highlighted/investigated. Nothing will be resolved if you don’t try, & if it involves using your mothers name well so be it. If she doesn’t supply her name than it would be virtually impossible to pinpoint exactly what is happening in relation to her particular problem. Farming communities are quite close-knit, & word travels fast, so the chances are that your mother’s local community are already well aware of her current problem anyway from churchyard rumours or general word of mouth, & no doubt she would receive their full support, empathy & sympathy.

  Best of luck.


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## Welfarite (18 Feb 2010)

boxdog11 said:


> . Welfarite, as for your response. It was a threatening letter. My parents are country people in their seventies and like a lot of people of that generation, they are extremely religious and honest to a fault and that is 100% true so basically they filled out the forms that were necessary when dad reached pension age as honestly as they could. They had no idea about the follow up means tests and indeed it was up to the department to send out these forms (if required) and also they should have sent out an inspector to do the test with my parents if the means test was necessary. This is not my parents error and while it's fine for you to think that they if they received money in error that it's their fault, there's a big difference in not recieving the money for qualifying adult (or part thereof) in the first place and having the threat of being hit for a huge lump sum over something which isn't their fault / mistake so have a bit of empathy please.
> As regards your comment about non answering phones, industrial action over paycuts etc., my heart bleeds..... don't bother trying to defend this action, I'm doing the work of three people at the moment, no union, no safety nets, no pension - so I don't support it. All these people are doing are hurting the most vulnerable members of our society, hospital patients, seniors etc. My mother could contact noone in social welfare pensions dept. on receipt of this letter and it contributed greatly to her stress about this so like I said, my heart bleeds......


I resent the fact that you are taking my reply personally. I'm sorry for bothering to give an explanation as to why the review is taking palce on your parents' SW claim now. A few points on your reply to my advice:

1. You say it's a 'threatening' letter but still don't explain that contention. At the same time, you refer to SW as 'gangsters' so perhaps your judgement is clouded?. 
2. I never said I thought your parents received money in error and that it is their fault. I said; 'If SW are now investigating a 10 year old claim, it may be to clarify a possible irregularity from the original claim about your mother's income at the time'. I also said that 'The 'mistake' may have been your father's' without inferring that he got money in error. Something may have been filled out/omitted from a form which would warrant the review of the claim that so upsets you. The word 'mistake' was in inverted comma to indicate this possibility. That's all. 
3. I never tried to defend the industrial action of PS; read my post subjectively. I merely pointed out a course of action that you could take to complain about this action. I am not interested in whether your heart is bleeding or not and I am certainly not interested in getting involved in union issues, not am I interested in posting here to empathise with people.

It's a pity you can't step back from this issue and look at my post with a little less emotion and more subjectivity.


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## Annie51 (7 May 2012)

I realise this an old post but someone may be able to help me.  I have been working for the past 47 years, the first 5 were for a local company, then I got married and worked in the family business which my husband owned.  For the first 18 years working in the family business I did not pay any PRSI contributions, I was not allowed, Welfare would only allow my husband to pay into it.  I now find I am short those weeks for my full contributory pension.  Can I, like the farmers wives, pay it now?  The business became a Limited Company in 1989 so I have been paying 'S' contributions since then.  I will be losing about €23 euro per week if I cannot get credit for those weeks.  I think after working 47 years I should be entitled to a full pension.


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