self employed entitlements

Looking like work is going to dry up, have managed to stay working up until now have kept my tax affairs up to date. Have a little savings but will not last long. Have heard some horror stories but not to sure if they are just urban legend where self employed people are not even being assessed just refused any assistance. Would prefer to stay working as i have being off now for just over a week and am loosing my mind with boredom. Are things as bad as they say what are my entitlements

Here is the official lin - Citizens Information: Self-employed & unemployments.

You will be subject to means test.
I was out for 3 months, living on savings and rent-a-room.
I finally caved in & signed on. Filled out forms, was told to provide bunch of info for an interview.
During interview inspector went through all details only to tell me that I shold not have applied becuse my gross the previous year was too high. (€60K).

So despite having paid 3K per month in VAT, PRSI & PAYE she told me I was not entitled to anything.
I then had to listen to her having a bit of a moan about her pension levy.
Spoke to my TD who said it should be appealed, that I was entitled to something.

Long & short of it was that I got a job before things got too bad.

Best advice I can give it to apply as soon as you can becuse there is a backlog and will take min 6 weeks to sort out (really longer though).

Call [broken link removed] for some help and advice.

Good luck - have a look at other threads here. You are not alone.

Thanks for the response information from someone who has been through it is gold in my opinion as alot of the information in the public domain is changing so fast or is very vague again thanks