State Pension - Tracing Missing Stamps

Andrew H

Hi all,

im looking for some advice for my Father. He worked in the Private Sector as a Sheet Metal Worker until he was 30, starting his apprenticeship when he was 15. When the trade died down he went into the Semi-State Sector as a Postman.

He has recently retired and the Social welfare section cannot find all of the stamps he paid while working in the Private Sector and as such his pension entitlements are not what they should be.

Can ayone advise of the best way to try and track these missing stamps or if there is a company/person that can be hired at a reasonable cost to try and track down the missing stamps?

Thanks for any help or advice.

Andrew

Andrew H

Can anyone advise?

mw3guc

You might get more information on this in the State Benefits section of Boards. I'm afraid I have nothing useful to add beyond that advice

Andrew H

Thanks for the reply mw3guc.

Can one of the administrators please move this thread as per above sugestion?

Thanks,
Andrew

mrsbyrne

Andrew H wrote: »

Hi all,

im looking for some advice for my Father. He worked in the Private Sector as a Sheet Metal Worker until he was 30, starting his apprenticeship when he was 15. When the trade died down he went into the Semi-State Sector as a Postman.

He has recently retired and the Social welfare section cannot find all of the stamps he paid while working in the Private Sector and as such his pension entitlements are not what they should be.

Can ayone advise of the best way to try and track these missing stamps or if there is a company/person that can be hired at a reasonable cost to try and track down the missing stamps?

Thanks for any help or advice.

Andrew

He started paying a contribution (equivalant of A stamp) at 15/16 and paid his last full A stamp at 30, then went into D stamp territory (An Post) at 30 for the rest of his working life, is that what happened? Also what rate of state pension have they offered him?

Andrew H

mrsbyrne wrote: »

He started paying a contribution (equivalant of A stamp) at 15/16 and paid his last full A stamp at 30, then went into D stamp territory (An Post) at 30 for the rest of his working life, is that what happened? Also what rate of state pension have they offered him?

Sorry for the late reply mrsbyrne.

My Da started his aprenticeship at 16 and started working in the Post Office when he was 34 1/2. He has 30 years worth of D stamps and 847 A1 stamps.

He had sometime off in between jobs but it seems during some of his holidays he did not receive a stamp. Plus he is not sure if they have taken into account all the places he has worked previously.

He recently retired at 65 and is currently on a transition year he is getting a Social Welfare payment of 83.70 for his time before working in Postal Service

Andrew H

To The Top.

mrsbyrne

So your Da is getting an An Post pension for his 30 years of D stamps plus a small amount of State pension for the A stamps he paid previous to that? The Dept of SW have different ways of calculating a persons entitlement to a contributory pension but in lay mans terms they count, from the first A stamp your dad ever paid, all the years until his retirement, which in your das case is 65. they add up all the A stamps (NOTE! A ONLY!!!) I think you said 847 and divide it by the number of years that have elapsed in your das case 50 years. 847 / 50 = nearly 17. that is your dads "average" of A stamps. Are you still with me? Wake up down there at the back lol!!
Now in order for your dad to get even a reduced rate of transition pension he needed an "average" of at least 24. he didnt have that.So he has been given a "pro-rata" rate of i think you said 83 euros and odd cents. so this is were i leave you. Pro-rata is very complex. What he could do is take whatever correspondence he has from Sligo down to his local SW office and ask to see the SW inspector who should be more than happy to explain how they reached this amount. The SW inspector would not normally be in the office every day, but usually are there for at least a couple of hours once or twice a week, so best to find out first when would be a good time to call.
If hes still not happy that all his stamps were counted, for example if he is sure that a full year of stamps were paid for him the first year he worked and they are not showing up on his record of contributions, then he would need to get evidence that those stamps were paid. How? well is that firm still in business? its highly improbable, if they are, that they have records going back that far, but you never know. other than that hes really on a hiding to nothing. maybe another poster will have experience of this, but my experience is that they will not budge without concrete evidence.
I just wanted to add here, for your dad to get up to the "average" of 24 needed for even the reduced amount of transition pension, then he would need to "find" an awful lot of A stamps to boost his average from 17 to 24. Im hopeless at maths, but its whatever sum divided by 50 would give 24 that hes looking for. So, that amount more A stamps.
At 66 he could look for a non-contributory instead, but as that is means-tested, hes unlikely to get anything because of his An Post pension.