How long more have you to retirement and how long since you last worked? If it's a long time since you last worked it may be too late to do anything, if you worked until recently and have a decent length to retirement then you could sign for credits if not entitled to an actual payment or you could become a voluntary contributory paying 500 a year prsi. However you just can't do either of these out of the blue, they must be a follow on from working and you'd want to have a good few years left before retirement to make it worthwhile paying.