Backlog in Processing Invalidity Pension impacting on State Pension application.

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SlurrySlump

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My wife is on Illness Benefit. She will be 66 in early April. She was advised to submit a claim for Invalidity Pension by the Illness Benefit Section in the Department of Social Welfare in November. She did.

Apparently there is a huge backlog in processing these applications. A month has passed and still nothing from the department.

She has been advised that she should submit her application for her State Pension at least 3 months in advance of due payment.

What should she do? If the Invalidity Pension application is refused, (this could take months to find out), will she have to then submit a separate application for her State Pension? She could already be 66 years of age at this stage.

Or, in addition to her application for Invalidity Pension should she also submit her forms for the State Pension?
 
Has she got enough contributions for a full rate of Pension? I suspect that she was advised to apply for Invalidity which would follow on to a full rate pension.

Invalidity is usually a long drawn out process so it may be a good idea to have a Pension application [n just before April if you have no response before then from Invalidity.
 
We are in an almost identical situation as SlurrySlump. We were also advised to go down the Invalidity Pension route even though my wife should qualify for a state pension based on her paid and credited contributions.

I think that it may have something to do with getting a "full" rate pension rather than a partial pension.
 
In order to qualify for the state contributary pension you have to have at least 520 paid contributions. Additional credits can increase the amount of pension you can get.
Another way to qualify for the pension is if you have at least 260 contributions and you are on invalidity pension you automatically qualify for the state pension when you are 66. But if you are on illness benefit at 66 and you have less than 520 paid contributions, credits don't count - you don't qualify for the state pension, you have to be on invalidity pension.
Once you are on illness benefit for a year you should get a review from SW and you should but not always be transfered to invalidity pension.
 
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I am removing this post as it was confusing given the edits I made
 
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There is no such thing as Invalidity Benefit, it is called Illness Benefit. (That is what Grizzly is referring to in his post).
 
Sorry you are right. I have edited my posts
My point is you have to be on invalidity pension to automatically qualify for the state pension.
I'm new to all this illness benefit invalidity pension
 
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