Tom Hayes (Tipperary South, Fine Gael)
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Question 328: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs if a person who is job sharing, working one week on and one week off, and paying a class D contribution and is working on the farm owned by the person and the spouse on alternate weeks, is entitled to pay a contribution entitling them to a pension for their years working the farm. [44878/08]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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Workers are insured under the Social Welfare Acts as either employed or self-employed contributors. All workers, both employed and self-employed, are obliged to pay PRSI contributions as a percentage of their personal reckonable income. These contributions provide entitlement to a range of contingency-based payments under various social insurance schemes — including pensions.

Employments that are insurable at PRSI Class D are classified as modified employments. PRSI Class D provides social insurance coverage for permanent and pensionable employees in the public service — other than those who were recruited after 6 April, 1995, or doctors and dentists employed in the Civil Service, Gardaí, commissioned army officers, and members of the Army Nursing Service.

Contributors insured at PRSI Class D are not eligible for social insurance-based pensions on retirement. Modified employments are covered under Civil Service regulations for both sick pay during illness, and their occupational pensions are covered by a superannuation scheme. As such, social insurance protection for these payments is not provided for.

Under Schedule 1, Part 3, Section 5 of the Social Welfare (Consolidation) Act 2005 modified contributors are defined as excepted self-employed contributors. This means that a modified contributor is prohibited from simultaneously paying PRSI Class S contributions on other earnings from other sources. There are no plans to review or alter the arrangements outlined above.