Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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566. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the options open to a person (details supplied) in County Cork to continue to pay PRSI contributions or receive credits that would be reckonable for the State contributory pension. [8695/18]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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Self-employed persons are liable for PRSI at the Class S rate of 4% which entitles them to access long-term benefits such as state pension (contributory) and widow's, widower's or surviving civil partner's pension (contributory) as well as guardians payment (contributory), maternity benefit, paternity benefit and adoptive benefit. Ordinary employees who have access to the full range of social insurance benefits pay PRSI Class A at the rate of 4%. In addition, their employers make a PRSI contribution of 10.85% in respect of their employees, resulting in the payment of a combined 14.85% rate per employee under full-rate PRSI Class A. (For employees earning less than €376 per week, the rate of employer’s PRSI is 8.6%).

Self-employed workers who become ill may access social insurance supports by establishing eligibility to assistance-based payments such as disability allowance. In assessing means from self-employment, income from the previous twelve months is used as an indicator of likely future earnings.

Given the variety of self-employment situations, the means assessment procedures are applied in a flexible manner to ensure that any circumstances that would be likely to lead to a significant variation, either upward or downward, in the level of a person’s income from one year to the next are taken into consideration. As in the case of a non-self-employed claimant for disability allowance, the means of spouse, civil partner or co-habitant will be taken into account in deciding on entitlement to a payment.

There is also a Voluntary Contribution Scheme which allows those who are no longer working or who otherwise are not paying PRSI, to protect their PRSI entitlement to certain social insurance benefit, including state pension. A person can apply to join the scheme from 1 year to 5 years from the end of the year in which contributions were last paid, as an employee or as a self-employed worker.

Voluntary Contributions (VCs) are designed to facilitate employees and self-employed individuals, who are no longer paying PRSI, to pay contributions directly to the Department on a voluntary basis, to protect their future state pension contributory, widow(er)’s contributory pension and guardian’s contributory pension entitlements.

The scheme is most frequently used by employees who have retired early, or by self-employed individuals who are not required to pay PRSI Class S because their annual income falls below the annual €5,000 liability threshold. To become a voluntary contributor an individual must have paid at least 520 weeks of compulsory PRSI from either employment or self-employment prior to application.

Budget 2017 introduced a range of improvements for the self-employed. Since March 2017, self-employed people now have access to the Treatment Benefit scheme which includes free eye and dental exams, and contributions towards the cost of hearings aids. Treatment benefit entitlements was also extended in October 2017 so as to provide further Dental and Optical Benefits for both the self-employed and employees.

Self-employed workers are also eligible for the Invalidity Pension from December 2017. This is a major reform as, for the first time, self-employed people have access to the safety-net of State income supports, without having to go through a means test, if they become permanently incapable of work as a result of an illness or disability.