James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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1553. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the position regarding Irish persons that live in South Korea, in which there is no reciprocal agreement between it and Ireland, which results in a person being unable to collect contributions upon their departure from their second country; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [36269/17]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The Social Welfare (Agreement With the Republic of Korea on Social Security) Order 2008 (S.I. No. 552/2008) provides that periods of social insurance in Ireland and in the Republic of Korea may be taken into account, where necessary, by either State in order to qualify for certain benefits and pensions. In effect, it protects the pension rights of people who have worked and paid reckonable social security contributions in Ireland and in Korea by allowing a person to combine the period of contributions in each country, if necessary, to qualify for a pension payment under either Irish or Korean law.

The Agreement ensures thatthe contributions paid retain a value even when the person leaves Korea. For instance, they would be particularly important if the person should need to claim an Irish invalidity pension or survivor’s pension within a few years of returning to Ireland. Similarly, if the person did not have enough Irish contributions for State pension entitlement on reaching pension age, the Korean contributions would be added to their Irish contributions for this purpose.

As a key objective of the Agreement is to allow the social insurance contributions paid in Ireland and Korea to be aggregated, as necessary, when considering an insured contributor’s entitlement to the range of pensions covered, it does not provide for persons to collect the value of the social insurance contributions paid on their departure from Korea. There are no plans to review this situation at present.