Séamus Brennan (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)

A person who is in receipt of a social welfare payment may claim an increase in respect of a dependent spouse or partner. This increase, known as qualified adult allowance, QAA, is normally paid as a single amount with the primary payment to the claimant. Provision has existed for many years to split the payment and pay the spouse or partner separately if the recipient so wished, or in cases of difficult family circumstances.

In recent years the question of paying the QAA direct to the adult dependant as the norm has been raised in a number of reports, the intention being to provide the dependant with a level of economic freedom. Significant changes have been made in the social welfare code over the years to ensure that as many people as possible qualify for a social welfare payment in their own right.

In the recent budget, I announced significant improvements in the rate of payment for qualified adults on State pensions and important changes in the way these payments will be made in future. The changes will involve amending the existing arrangements to provide that, in the case of new claimants to the State pension schemes, the qualified adult increase will be paid directly to the qualified adult. Customers who wish to be paid their pension jointly will continue to be facilitated. The revised arrangements will apply to all new applicants to the State pension schemes with effect from 24 September 2007.

The position regarding payments to people of working age is less straightforward and a separate payment may not be appropriate for certain schemes. It is open to a dependent spouse or partner to claim payments such as jobseeker's allowance in his or her own right subject to satisfying means and other conditions.

The social welfare pension rights of those who take time out of the workforce for caring duties are protected by the homemaker's scheme which was introduced in 1994. The scheme allows up to 20 years — from 1994 — spent caring for children or incapacitated adults to be disregarded when a person's social insurance record is being averaged over his or her full working life for pension purposes. Provision is also made for the award of credited contributions in the year in which a person commenced or ceased to be a homemaker.

The homemaker's scheme will not of itself qualify a person for a pension. The standard qualifying conditions for State pension contributory, which require a person to enter insurance ten years before pension age, pay a minimum of 260 contributions at the appropriate rate and achieve a yearly average of at least ten contributions from the time they enter insurance until they reach pension age, must also be satisfied.

A review of the homemaker's scheme and other issues relating to social welfare pensions is taking place in the context of the forthcoming Green Paper on pensions which is expected will be finalised by the end of March 2007. A consultation process will then take place and the Government will publish a framework for future pensions policy on foot of this.

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