Bernard Allen (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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Question 303: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs the arrangements which exist in order that EU citizens who have worked in France and Germany are able to claim social welfare and old age pension entitlements here; and if social welfare contributions made during a term of employment in France and Germany are reckonable for social welfare and pension purposes here. [13246/05]

Séamus Brennan (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)
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Under the Treaty of the European Community and the European Economic Area, EEA, agreement, citizens of member states are entitled to travel to other member states to seek employment. As such, EEA nationals are treated in the same way as Irish citizens in respect of applications for social welfare payments and national legislation does not distinguish between nationals and non-nationals.

In addition to national legislation, the entitlement of EU nationals to social welfare payments are governed by EU social security regulations 1408/71 and 574/72. The regulations are based on four principles: a person is generally only subject at any given time to the legislation of a single state, usually the state of employment; equality of treatment with own nationals — member states must not discriminate against the nationals of other member states; entitlements accumulated in one member state should be recognised when calculating benefit entitlements in another; the regulations allow for relevant periods of insurance, employment or residence in any member state to be taken into account, that is, aggregated to help people obtain certain benefits in another member state; and the regulations provide that pensions acquired under the legislation of a member state must be paid to the person concerned even if she or he resides in another member state and cannot be subject to reduction or modification. Subject to certain conditions, sickness benefits and unemployment benefit are exportable, the latter for a maximum of three months.

Thus workers who do not satisfy the contribution conditions under national legislation can rely on aggregation to qualify in Ireland for such payments as disability benefit and unemployment benefit. If such persons have been insured in Ireland for at least one year, they can qualify for pro-rata pensions, such as survivor's and old age contributory pension. For example, a person with 15 years' reckonable Irish PRSI contributions and 25 years insurance' in France could get 15/40ths of the Irish old age contributory pension that would be payable if all the 40 years' contributions were Irish. On the same basis, the person could be entitled to 25/40ths of a pension from France as if all the 40 years' contributions were paid in France.