Written answers

Thursday, 8 February 2018

Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection

State Pensions

Photo of Catherine MurphyCatherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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273. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the sectors and-or industries in which persons who are engaged in informal partnerships for work with their partner are recognised as being eligible for a State pension in their own right; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [6486/18]

Photo of Regina DohertyRegina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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Under social welfare legislation, the social insurance status of family members including spouses working in a family business can vary. Spouses and relatives who are engaged in a business partnership are treated as individual self-employed contributors who are liable to social insurance contributions, provided their annual income exceeds €5,000. These contributions enable them to build up an insurance record in their own right and receive accruing benefits.

Alternatively, where a family business is incorporated as a limited company, spouses and assisting relatives involved in the business pay PRSI contributions either as employees or as self-employed contributors depending on whether a contract of service exists, subject to their income exceeding the appropriate thresholds.

Since 2014, certain spouses and civil partners of people who are self-employed are able to access social insurance by paying Pay Related Social Insurance (PRSI) to build up entitlement to social insurance benefits as a self-employed worker. Prior to 2014 these categories of spouses or civil partners were excluded from social insurance.

The spouses or civil partners affected are those who:

- assist in the business of their self-employed spouse/civil partner performing the same or ancillary tasks,

- but who is not a business partner or an employee.

The Social Welfare code contains a provision excluding self-employed persons from employing their spouse/civil partner. This caters for the situation where there is an explicit or implied contract of employment between a self-employed person and their spouse/civil partner. Paragraph 1 of Part 2 of Schedule 1 of the SWCA 2005, refers to “excepted employment” as including “employment in the service of the husband, wife or civil partner of the employed person”.

The following are other specific ‘Family Employments' that are notcovered by the Social Insurance system:

- A person who is employed as an employee by a 'prescribed relative' and the family employment relates to a private dwelling house or a farm in or on which both the person and the employer reside.

- A person who is not a spouse or civil partner and who assists or participates in the running of the family business but not as an employee (such as, a son/daughter who is attending full-time education and who participates in the business for example, helps out on a farm after school hours).

I hope this clarifies the matter.

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