Séamus Brennan (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)

——I will certainly do so. Now that he has raised the matter, I will have it monitored. There is, however, substantial flexibility here. If there is a joint account, say, from a redundancy or pension lump sum, and a couple is involved, one of whom is in receipt of a qualified adult allowance, they will have the choice of lodging the lump sum in their joint names or to one person. If they lodge it to one person, it will not be accessible and does not affect the other person who will get the qualified adult allowance even if the spouse has over €116,000 in his or her account, because that would not be counted. If, on the other hand, they put the lump sum into a joint account, the rule is that we assess half of that as the means of the person who is seeking the qualified adult allowance. They may be disbarred from it for that reason.

In short, there is no reason for any couple not to use the flexibility that is there. They can choose to put the money in the name of one person or in both names. If they choose the latter, it may affect their benefits but if they put it in one name, it almost certainly will not affect their benefits. Therefore, it is fairly logical what advice they should be given. Unfortunately, there are dotted lines to this in the whole legal area of probate, to which the Deputy has referred.

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