Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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92. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if a grandfathering clause will be included for persons who were self-employed but had to give up work due to invalidity before the introduction of invalidity pension for the self-employed. [38655/18]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The Government is committed to encouraging self-employment and entrepreneurship and this includes improving the level of PRSI based benefits available to self-employed people while ensuring the sustainability of the social insurance fund.

Self-employed contributors have been eligible for the invalidity pension since December 2017. For the first time, this has given the self-employed access to a social insurance based income support if they become permanently incapable of work as a result of an illness or disability without having to go through a means test. This represented a real improvement in the level of social insurance cover available to the self-employed even though the level of contribution was not increased. When deciding to extend access to this benefit to the self-employed, Government wanted to ensure that it was on a similar basis to that of those in employment.

To qualify for an Invalidity Pension from the Department, a self-employed person or employee must have 260 PRSI paid contributions (Class A, E, H or S) since they started paying social insurance and 48 PRSI paid or credited contributions (Class A, E, H or S) in the last complete contribution year or the second last contribution year before the date of their claim. Contributions outside of the reference period cannot be assessed for the purposes of establishing the required 48 paid or credited contributions.

A person, with the required 260 paid PRSI contributions, applying for Invalidity Pension in 2018 must therefore have 48 paid or credited contributions in either 2016 or 2017 to meet the contribution conditions of the scheme.

It would not be possible to introduce special arrangements for self-employed without breaching the original objective of this measure which was that it would be done on the same basis as employed contributors.

I hope this clarifies the issue for the deputy.