Denied a full contributory pension because she had worked in the 50's

Where a married couple hold joint savings accounts is there any point in taking one name off the account and applying for the non contrib. pension?

I thought that all savings of a married couple were considered shared for the purposes of the means test and were approptioned 50:50 regardless of the names on accounts etc.?

Brendan said:

The Social Welfare system is full of anomalies and I have come across this one before. I don't remember the detail, but to qualify for a pension you need to have an average of say 60% contributions during your working life.

If you work from the age of 20 to 30 and again from 50 to 60, you will have worked for 20 years out of 40,and so your average is 50%.

If you did not work in the earlier period, you will have 10 years contributions during a working life of ten years and so your average will be 100%.

It's crazy, but it's the way it works.

Brendan

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so could you theoretically begin your working life at 61 , work for 5 years, pay contributions for 3 of them and then get the contributory pension at 66

Sign - I presume you meant to say the contributory pension at age 65?

The non-contributory is based on a means test, not on PRSI contributions.
It is not paid until age 66.

oops yes I corrected it. Thanks CapitalCCC . I hope I explained what I mean, give or take a year or 2 around my example .

Can anyone answer my question

Ring Sligo I would imagine - I can't imagine there are too many people who have actually been in this situation!

I dont want to spend hours on hold for a question which doesnt affect me anyway thanks
I just wondered if that was the gist of what Brendan was saying earlier.

sign, a quick glance at welfare.ie gives the following:

To qualify for the state pension (contributory) - aka the old age contributory pension -

The first contribution must be paid before age 56 for persons born after 1/10/1922 and a person must have paid 260 full rate contributions if retirement is before 2012 (it rises to 520 after that date).

There are other ifs and ands and qualifying conditions, but I think the info above rules out your idea of a speedily-earned pension!

Brendan's anomaly does exist, in general the qualifying period for counting reckonable PRSI contributions begins on the date of first insurable employment.