Noel Grealish (Galway West, Independent)
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552. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the maximum number of social insurance contributions payable in any one year and in the context of a person working in two separate employments; if the extra contributions will be taken into consideration when calculating pension benefits; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [41317/16]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Access to social insurance benefits is based on the payment of contributions in respect of contribution weeks. A contribution week is defined in social welfare legislation as “one of the successive periods of 7 consecutive days in a contribution year beginning on the first day of that contribution year, or on any 7th day after that day, the last day of a contribution year (or the last 2 days of a contribution year ending in a leap year) being taken as included in the last contribution week of that contribution year”. Accordingly, there are 52 contribution weeks in any given contribution year.

Entitlement to benefits and pensions is based on the payment of qualifying contributions (the number varies across schemes) for a specified number of contribution weeks in a particular contribution year. A qualifying contribution is the appropriate employment contribution which was paid in respect of any insured person in relation to any contribution week.

Where an employee earns €38 or more in a week, employment contributions are paid by the employer and, for weekly earnings in excess of €352, by the employee. In instances where an individual works in two or more separate employments in the same contribution week and employment contributions are paid as appropriate, employment contributions are recorded for all employments in respect of the same contribution week. In other words, the employee has qualifying contributions in one contribution week.

These arrangements are very long-standing. It should be noted that, in the case of employees who have one employment only in any given contribution week, no account is taken of the amount of PRSI paid by each individual employee/employer on foot of the level of earnings of the individual employee in that week. All such contributors are employed in one contribution week and the qualifying contribution paid in that week will count towards satisfying the contribution conditions for any given benefit or pension in due course.

There are no plans to change the current arrangements in relation to the counting of contribution weeks based on multiple employments.