Made redundant - Jobseekers application

I applied to Jobseekers after being made redundant in November. I received the following notification.

Please be advised as you have received in excess of €90,000 in redundancy payment and you are under 55 years of age, the maximum disqualification period of 9 weeks will apply to your claim.

This means you will lose 9 weeks of your Jobseekers Benefit entitlement, if you were to claim now.
If you were to hold on until the 9 weeks elapse and make your claim on 1st February 2025, you will be entitled to receive your full 9 month entitlement on Jobseekers Benefit, should you remain unemployed for that length of time.

Please let me know in the 'officer communication' tab how you would like to proceed within the next 7 days, i.e. by 20th December 2024.

Failure to respond will mean I will proceed with the decision to disqualify for 9 weeks.


What are the benefits of proceeding with the Jobseeker's Benefit application v deferring the application for 9 weeks as advised by the DSP?

On the face of it Welfare seems to be saying you'd be better to withdraw your claim and apply instead on 1st Feb. If you do I wonder will they hound you regarding what efforts you made to secure employment in the interim, perhaps making a delayed claim trappy.

michaelm said:

On the face of it Welfare seems to be saying you'd be better to withdraw your claim and apply instead on 1st Feb.

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That's my understanding too.
Proceed with the current application and you'll be eligible for JB for 9 months minus 9 weeks.
Cancel this application and apply again in February and you'll be eligible for the full 9 months (subject to the usual qualification criteria).

You'll gain 9 weeks of payments if you defer until Feb assuming you don't get a job before the 9 months is up, either way you're getting nothing for next 9 weeks so makes sense to defer to Feb.

Your only loss in deferring would be 9 weeks of Jobseekers credits. If the nine weeks are not needed to allow you to reach 2080 contributions, or to get you to a higher averaging band at age 66, you are not loosing anything in deferring.

S class said:

Your only loss in deferring would be 9 weeks of Jobseekers credits.

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Can't credits still be claimed for the 9 weeks?

If you are unemployed and don’t qualify for a jobseeker’s payment, you can still sign on for credits, if you meet the qualifying conditions.

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ClubMan said:

Can't credits still be claimed for the 9 weeks?

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I am not sure about this.

If a person signs on as a Jobseeker and actually qualifies for a payment they might be automatically awarded payment, but in this particular case the payment would then be delayed for 9 weeks.

Any loss of credits would only be significant if they resulted in not getting into a higher averaging band.

Probably unlikely to happen, but a friend I was helping out is only 1 contribution short of reaching average 15 and would loose out on approximately 50 euro per week in pension because of this.

Thanks for the replies everyone