Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As I said, if the Deputy will give me the details of the case, we can check it. If the people go to their local office and explain the circumstances, we have the capacity to be flexible. I have to be very honest with the Deputy and clear on this. The requirement to be habitually resident in Ireland as part of the social welfare system was introduced as a qualifying condition for certain social assistance schemes and child benefit with effect from 1 May 2004. The effect of the condition is that a person whose habitual residence is elsewhere would not normally be entitled to social welfare assistance or child benefit on arrival in Ireland. In many cases, such a person would not be entitled to export it. While I understand the Deputy has a particular set of circumstances in mind regarding Irish people who have been living and working in Ireland, we live in an EU which has habitual residence conditions. Given that our pension payments, notwithstanding the earlier discussion, are among the highest in the EU, the Deputy would be opening us to a huge number of people coming from other EU countries to claim non-contributory pensions. It would be very difficult to afford it. The Deputy must be very careful about it.

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