Buying a house while on social welfare/back to education scheme

Hi,

Not exactly a straightforward question and have done a lot of google'ing to see if I can find similar situations but no luck so far so here goes..

I am on the back to education scheme for potentially the next 4 years, and I co-own my family home due to inheriting it along with some siblings but I have moved out as its a long way from college and am paying rent (which will be about 17,000 over the 4 years. Its going to be bought by one of my siblings at some point whenever I can use the money for something. I would like to know does anybody know about the possibility of me receiving a lump sum of money and being able to put it straight into another property without losing my back to education allowance? I have been told there is a limit to the amount of money you can receive while on the dole/BTEA but am not sure is there any way around this!

Hope someone can help!

Thanks in advance!

I don't know the answer to your question, but I'd be very interested to hear the answer. A friend of mine is (almost) in a similar position. She is on BTEA and receives rent supplement. It is likely that she will receive a bequest of somewhere in the region of €75,000 in the next year or so. Just enough to allow her to buy a (very modest) home (thus saving the taxpayer the cost of further rent supplement payments) - but it's also enough to extinguish the means-tested BTEA, it seems.

Sounds like a job for http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/

A paragraph from the Operational Guidelines on Back to Education Allowance:

If there is a change in means circumstances other than part-time work undertaken by the BTEA recipient during the academic year, then a revised decision may be applied.

This means that the underlying claim (Jobseeker's Allowance) can be reviewed if means change during the year, and that might affect entitlement to BTEA.

In the circumstances outlined above, if the money is used to purchase a home (rather than a rental property), then there would be no means to assess. If the money remained in an account for some time, it could then be treated as savings and assessed accordingly.

Thank's a lot for the reply Gipimann - I had hope something like this would be the case as it seems logical. I would be purchasing a small 2 bed house/apartment which would more than likely be just for myself in order to avoid any complications. I have been advised to talk to a solicitor about all of this but I was just searching about online first.

Thanks again!

+ Mystic Oil - if I hear any different from my solicitor about this I will try and let you know!