Illness Benefit Mess

Hi all,

My wife was claiming the dole, and due to an upcoming surgery she advised the local welfare office that she wouldn't be able to present each week to get her weekly money. They advised her to go on ilness benefit for the time of the surgery until she was well enough to start coming back in. They did advise her it normally takes 2-3 weeks for it to kick in and the money would go into her bank account while on it.

Sounds great, but this has turned it a mess. She was on illness benefit for over 7 weeks and we still haven't received any money from this. We rang up and queried it and they advised that couldn't find any prsi contributions from 2009. My wife did work during that year and we were sure that she had enough contributions. When checking her P45 for that year she had enough. We got back onto the welfare office, and it turned out that her employer in 2009 had used the wrong pps number on her p45 and they claimed thats why they couldn't see any contributions.

We have contacted her previous employer and they are trying to fix this with the revenue. The incorrect PPS number doesn't exist on any system, so we are quite perplexed about everything. I will also say that she signed back to the dole and they have been very accomodating in getting her back on to normall weekly payments starting this week but we have a 7 week hole in our finances. I have few questions hopefully someone can answer.

1. How long will it take the revenue to sort this out, and from when it gets sorted out how long do you think it will take for us to get the illness benefit for the time she was out?

2. We received a tax refund for 2009, would this have been based on the PPS number that was on her file with revenue(the wrong one) and what kind of liability would we have if it turns out they refunded a higher amount of tax than what were due under her correct pps number?

3. We are 2 months behind on gas and esb bills, and are now starting to get letters about payment. We have been paying small amounts towards the bills each month but not enough to clear them. Do you think that contacting them and explaining the above situation will help in anyway?

I appreciate any support and help anyone can give.

Thanks,
TaxedParent

I can't answer your specific queries on how long it will take, or about the revenue, but it might help you to know that while an application for Illness Benefit (or any other social welfare payment) is pending, you can apply for supplementary welfare allowance from your community welfare officer if your family's means are below the relevant limits. (310.80 for a couple with no children, with an additional 29.80 for each child) Check here to see if you may qualify http://www.welfare.ie/EN/Schemes/Su...Pages/BasicSupplementaryWelfareAllowance.aspx

There is a disqualification if either spouse is in full time employment, although you didn't say if you were working or not. If you yourself are working less than 30 hours a week, then check this out as you (or her) may be eligible for a payment. They will backdate the Illness Benefit claim, and deduct any payment of SWA from it.

If you are working 19 hours or more, and have children, also check out Family Income Supplement. http://www.welfare.ie/EN/Schemes/BirthChildrenAndFamilies/ChildRelatedPayments/Pages/fis.aspx

As for the gas and ESB, contact them and try to come to an agreement that you can afford. If they won't agree to an amount that you can afford, then you can ask the community welfare officer for an exceptional needs payment to clear the debt. There is no obligation for the community welfare officer to pay this, but its worth making the application. For further details see http://www.welfare.ie/EN/Publications/SW94/Documents/sw94.pdf

just a note we got the sickness benefit on 30th March, we made arrangements with gas and esb on paying them and are now up to date, they were pretty happy to help us we had a proven track record of payments which I think helped.