Any entitlements for self employed?

[netz]

Hi, can anyone advise me if we entitled to any help from SW. We are married, 3 children aged 10 and 12, and 21 (in college, no income) I get 232 per week invalidity pension, and my husband is self employed. We just got his figures from accountant. Last years figures he made 188 per week before tax. We have tried the following for help with no success:

• Qualified Dependant Adult increase in my pension, refused as we have been getting help from family members and they classed this as income.
• CWO, who refused us help on the basis that the figures he uses are husbands actual turnover, not operating profit (laughable)
• Tried signing on, but as he is self employed not entitle to Benefits, and we could have applied for JS allowence, we cant wait the approx 4 months with no money, and CWO wont pay??

Any advice appreciated, we seem to be stuck in a vicious circle, Thanks

 

[Peter C]

Yes, this is a vicious circle and all those being encouraged by the Government to open their own business should be made fully aware of it, they do not even have a system in place where self employed can pay the higher PRSI rate to protect previous contributions made.

I suggest that you contact Joan Burton's office direct joan.burton@oireachtas.ie they are very aware of the inequality in the system so ask for a department review of your case.

Also keep signing on make a new claim every time if you have to, I'm not sure how it works but apparantly everytime you sign on you get credits.

Remember you are dealing with a very suspicous department who will not understand how or why your husband continued to trade earning so little (benchmarking they are well paid now?) the first impression they give is where did you hide all the cash made in that year.

As far as I know the CWO must pay while there is an active claim being processed so keep your claim active and keep kmaking new claims.

Wishing you the very best of luck, it will take time but the children must be fed.

 

[gipimann]

As far as I know the CWO must pay while there is an active claim being processed so keep your claim active and keep kmaking new claims.

The above quote is not accurate. Supplementary Welfare Allowance claims are subject to qualifying criteria and a means test. The fact that another SW claim is being processed does not entitle a person to SWA.

 

[Ildánach]

With your pension and your husband's income you have more income than the SWA rate. This is why the CWO cannot pay you anything, rather than anything else.

One thing you could try is to set out that your average earnings for the year are no longer representative of your husband's CURRENT income (if of course, this is the case). If for example he had a run of work at the start of the year and things have dried up with little prospect of returning to previous levels, then you can ask for a different period to be used rather than the standard 52 weeks. It is common enough for them to use the last 13 weeks or 26 weeks if you can show that this is more representative.

For you not to be entitled to an increase for your husband, he would have to have an income of more than 300 Euro a week. You would have to be getting a fairly big regular payment from relatives to bring you over this rate.

Depending on the circumstances you could appeal the decision to refuse the increase for a qualified adult. It would depend on the nature and regularity of the payment from your relatives whether this should have been considered as income.