Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity)
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173. To ask the Minister for Social Protection if he will change the regulations so persons applying for jobseeker's benefit payments will be assessed on the most recent complete tax year, in order to end the inequity of contributions made by employees in the previous year not being taken into account when calculating jobseeker's benefit, for example, the relevant tax year for jobseeker's benefit applications in 2017 is 2015 (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15829/17]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Social insurance benefits including jobseeker’s benefit are payments which are covered by pay related contributions.

To qualify for jobseekers benefit, for example, a person must satisfy the conditionality for the scheme including the contribution conditions. They must have at least 104 weeks qualifying PRSI contributions paid since they first started work and 39 weeks qualifying PRSI contributions paid or credited in the relevant tax year or, 26 weeks qualifying PRSI paid in the relevant tax year and 26 weeks qualifying PRSI paid in the tax year immediately before the relevant tax year. The relevant tax year is the second last complete tax year before the year in which your claim is made. So, for claims made in 2017, the relevant tax year is 2015.

The Revenue Commissioners collect PRSI on behalf of the Department and send this information to the Department, who then update the employee’s PRSI records. Each registered employer in Ireland is obliged by law to account each year for the Income Tax, PRSI, Universal Social Charge and where applicable Local Property Tax deducted from his or her employees. A special return, which is commonly known as a P35 return, is used for this purpose.

For the 2016 relevant tax year the deadline for the P35 to be sent to the Revenue Commissioners was the 15th February 2017 (23rd February 2017 if using the electronic submission facility). Therefore, the Department does not receive PRSI information in relation to a person’s contributions in the previous relevant tax year until after these dates. This means that for a person making a claim for a social insurance benefit in January or February 2017, their insurance (PRSI) record for 2016 is not yet available to my Department.

Additionally, information in relation to mistakes made or changes to the details relating to employee(s) already returned by employers on their P35 return are sent in throughout the year to the Revenue Commissioners, and onwards to the Department. Therefore it can take many months into the year before all employees PRSI details are fully updated in relation to the most recent complete tax year.

For these reasons I have no plans to change the current regulations for the assessment of jobseeker’s benefit to the most recent complete tax year.