Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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529. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if persons who were previously self-employed and who moved to carer's allowance can acquire credited contributions for pension purposes similar to PRSI workers who become carers; if not, her plans to amend this in the interests of fairness to those self-employed persons who have to give up work to care for a family member; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [53204/17]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The purpose of credited contributions (credits) is to protect social insurance entitlements by bridging gaps in an employee’s social insurance record, where they are not in a position to pay PRSI, such as for period of unemployment, illness or in receipt of certain payments, including carer’s allowance.

In isolation, credits do not give entitlement to social insurance benefits. In combination with paid PRSI contributions, credits can assist employees qualifying for short-term schemes such as jobseeker’s benefit. Credits may also enhance the level of benefit for long-term schemes such as the level of payment of State pension contributory (SPC), but only where the individual has already met the condition relating to the minimum number of paid contributions.

To qualify for credits an individual must satisfy entitlement to the credits scheme. While there are no self-employed credits, individuals who were previously employed can access the scheme in the same manner as other workers, subject to meeting the conditions of the scheme. In general credits can only be awarded where an individual has had a recent attachment to the workforce as an employee i.e. within the last 2 years. Therefore credits are not automatically awarded to all recipients of carer’s allowance.

Individuals who are caring on a full-time basis, including those in receipt of carer’s allowance may, however, qualify for the homemaker’s scheme. The homemaker’s scheme is designed to help homemakers and carers to protect their SPC entitlement, and applies to homemaking periods since 6 April 1994. It applies to the self-employed on the same basis as it does to other workers.

The homemaker’s scheme provides that years spent working in the home while caring on a full-time basis for a child up to 12 years of age or an incapacitated person age 12 or over will be disregarded in calculating a person's yearly average number of contributions for the purposes of determining the rate of their entitlement to SPC. In this way the homemaker’s scheme ensures that an individual’s entitlement to SPC is protected during periods spent caring.

As credits impact on social insurance entitlements, extending credits would have financial implications for the cost of paying social insurance benefits. Such an extension would have to considered in the Budgetary context of what additional costs would arise and how such costs could be met.