"Am I missing something or have the conditions for Class 2 have been tweaked and the requirement to have started work on arrival abroad (eg Ireland) is no longer there?"
There's posts in the HMRC fora suggesting they are mainly concerned with the situation post 2006. Also people report paying class 2 or 3 depending on what they were doing here.
It's possible people have conflated the working in UK "immediately" before leaving with working in Ireland immediately after arriving. I've seen no official reference to the latter.
But seems for post 2006 years it's class 2 to buy back when working and class 3 when not
Yes I have a friend who has been asked to pay class 2 on all the years since 2006, she has been working since then full time. After she left the uk she never set a foot in Ireland or the EU for years and did casual type work with no insurance record. It has taken me weeks to realise that no you don't need to have started work in Ireland immediately, what counts is what you did post 2006. So many people seem to think that and there does not seem to be much clarification about it online.
In response to above posts by mmclo and Dopey1
I've had the same experience: have been fretting about if my being unemployed on returning from the UK in the 90s scuppered my otherwise legit claim for Class 2 NICs from 2006 on. It always seemed an odd measure. Am open to correction but I have been unable to find this clause in any official document. What I have seen, on this forum, are two Class 2 rejection letters and the reasons given are that the person must
1. be gainfully employed outside the UK
2. be in employment that is not Class 1 payable
3. have been ordinarily employed before they last left the UK
ie no mention of working on arrival in Ireland.
As above post says, people (incl myself) must have conflated the requirement to be in employment *immediately* before leaving the UK with a similar requirement for their new life in Ireland.