Help please! Assessment of income for Disability Allowance

Hi everyone,

I hope someone can help. My friend's disability benefit is about to run out and her illness is permanent and deteriorating so she will be going on Disability Allowance (her stamps don't cover Invalidity Pension).

Her question to me today was how will her rent of €100 weekly from a self contained flat attached to her house affect the €188 weekly of Disability Allowance.

So, i read all the citizen's advice stuff on DA, means tests etc today and the best i can glean is that it would be taken as straight income - ie 188-100 = 88 will be her payment but she'll still be entitled to Household benefits etc.

Am i missing something? She doesn't want to ring and ask due to a few bad experiences.

Can anyone help?

Ladybird

It depends on whether the rented property is treated similarly to the "rent-a-room" situation (where the rent is assessed as you've described) or is treated as a second property in which case the assessment is the value of the property less any mortgage on it.

The operational guidelines on means assessment mention houses partly let, where the rental income is assessed, so it might fall under that category. Really depends on how independent the self-contained flat is (i.e. could it be sold separately to the house - if so, then it has a capital value).

Thanks a million for the reply Gipimann.

The flat is attached (back extension thingy) so couldn't be sold separately i think...

The mortgage is paid off the house completely.

To be honest, i feel a bit of a failure - i read through it all and couldn't make heads or tails of it and i'm no slouch. To me there didn't seem to be an exact formula for this situation and then i saw where you can have an income of €120 a week for rehabilitative work or have up to half of a wage of €375 taken into account and wondered would this be any help to her as i would see a flat they built to produce a small extra income as the same as income earned from a job? Or is she better off not letting it - but that seems to go against the ethos of helping yourself which the state should support.

Don't mind me - i'm all stressed after going through her finances with her today and realising how hard it is to be sick in this country.

Any advice from you would be greatly appreciated.

No, rental income isn't assessed in the same way as income from employment, so the various disregards that you read don't apply.

If she didn't let the property having let it in the past, it could be seen as depriving herself of an income in order to get a SW payment, and an assessment could be made anyway, so that's not of much benefit to her.

One point to note is that if she does get Disability Allowance, she will start to get credited PRSI contributions, which may allow her to qualify for Invalidity Pension in the future (some posters here have done that). If she qualifies for Invalidity Pension, the means assessment on the rental income would then not apply.

Thanks for that.

Also, I didn't realise you could do that with the prsi DA stamps - i'll get her to look into it.

Maybe selling the house and getting a smaller one is also an answer.

Thank you for taking the time to reply,

Ladybird

Are you sure your does not have enough PRSI contributions for Invalidity Pension. People sometimes forget that contributions made at any time during their working life are taken into account (260 paid, + 48 paid or credited in the past year).
She would have 48 credits from her Illness Benefit

Thanks Blacksheep,

I'll look into that with her. She told me the SW dept told her she was wasn't entitled to it so i'm hoping she didn't just take their word.

She was a housewife for years - single, kids, then minded sick parents, and then worked outside the home but got MS so was not fulltime.

She texted me earlier today to say she received an offer of help with all this from a support group co-ordinator so that is a blessing! But i will get her to check the stamps.


Ladybird