2 x redundant: appreciate your feedback

Dear all,

My wife will be made redundant on June 30 and I shall follow suit 1 month later. I am attempting to assess what our montly income will be, to allow me to have an informed discussion with the bank.

Background info:
My wife and I worked for 4 years in Ireland, emigrated to the US, returned to Ireland in 2007 and have been in our current positions from July 2007 until the present. We have 2 kids, under 5. In our current jobs, we both earned greater than e300 per week. We have never been on JA or JB before.

Q1: For Jobseekers Benefit, do the 260 paid contributions have to be consecutive? Can we add our previous 4 years contributions (1996-2000) to our current stint.

Q2: If the answer to Q1 is yes, they have to be consecutive, does that imply we will receive JB for a max. of 9 months?

Q3: Will we receive the following weekly: 1) 2 x 188 personal rate = 376 + 2) 2 x 2 x Qualified Child Full rate = 119.20, for a total of e495.20.

Q4: I am looking at a university course, which pays a stipend of e12k per annum. Will this affect my JB?

Many thanks in advance for your advice.

Contributions don't have to be consecutive, although you do have to have a certain amount in the General Contribution Year (which in 2011 will be 2009, so you should be grand there).

You will not get 2 x payments for the qualified children, you will only get one payment between you of 29.80 per each child. You can either both get a half payment for each child, or one of you claim for the full payment for both children.

Other than that you will get the 188 x 2 for a year.

As far as the university course is concerned, you need to be available for full time work, but if you've been holding down a full time job already then you should be able to persuade them that this is the case. Your stipend will not be taken into account while you are Jobseekers Benefit as it is not means tested.

If the redundancy payment to either of you is more than 50,000, then there will be a disqualification of a certain number of weeks (max. 9) from Jobseekers Benefit.

Check out the department website for more info http://www.welfare.ie/EN/Schemes/JobseekerSupports/JobseekersBenefit/Pages/jb.aspx