First off, sorry if this has been covered already. I did search but couldn't find an exact answer. I'm posting on behalf of my wife who has 4 qualifying years of NI payments (happy days) and she filled out the form and got a response back to say we could pay 13 more additional years of mostly class 2 and some class 3 payments. So we got that in on the April 5th deadline. So far so good!
What I'm now confused about is that I can understand that she is covered for the years she worked in the UK, the years she worked in Ireland were also taken into account (either class 2 or 3 depending if she was working here or not). Why does this matter to the UK government? Is there some reciprocal agreement that PRSI payments count towards eligibility to the UK pension system? And if so, now that we have claimed for all those years on the UK system, do they not count towards the Irish state pension system? Or are those years valid for both? Sounds too good to be true if so. We plan to pay for every year we can from now on into the UK pension, to max out to the 35 years, but would like to know if by doing so, we are opting out of the Irish state pension (i.e., is it one or the other?). If that was true, then we could probably try to work out the right number or years to get the maximum out of both. Or are we over thinking it?
What I'm now confused about is that I can understand that she is covered for the years she worked in the UK, the years she worked in Ireland were also taken into account (either class 2 or 3 depending if she was working here or not). Why does this matter to the UK government? Is there some reciprocal agreement that PRSI payments count towards eligibility to the UK pension system? And if so, now that we have claimed for all those years on the UK system, do they not count towards the Irish state pension system? Or are those years valid for both? Sounds too good to be true if so. We plan to pay for every year we can from now on into the UK pension, to max out to the 35 years, but would like to know if by doing so, we are opting out of the Irish state pension (i.e., is it one or the other?). If that was true, then we could probably try to work out the right number or years to get the maximum out of both. Or are we over thinking it?