Unemployed with serious illness

legendary.xix

Someone I know is unemployed and has been diagnosed with a serious illness. They were under the understanding from information given that were entitled to sickness benefit while undergoing treatment. This person has now been advised they are not entitled to sickness due to being out of work and not entitled to the job allowance they were on due to the illness.

Is this right? If someone is out of work and is diagnosed with an illness, are they not entitled to anything?

eastbono

They can apply for illness benefit and may not qualify. If they get a letter stating they do not qualify they can apply for supplementary welfare allowance from the community welfare officer but they still need to send in certs. An alternative is that they can apply for disability allowance and continue to be paid jobseekers while they are awaiting a decision on DA.

popperinthere

I think if the serious illness is debilitating enough they may be entitled to disability allowance? all forms in that respect need to be signed by a doctor I believe. My guess is that once they applied to go on sickness benefit they put a desk lackey on to investigate and decided to cut all payments because of technicalities. An appeal could take a long time so they'd need to do it sooner rather than later and definitely go into citizens information. Last resort would be to contact your local politician and explain things (my friend's sister was waiting for a response from the social for 8 months before the politician she contacted finally helped things along)

L0ui5e

Citizens Info would go through all the options with them.. Also depends on PRSI paid I think as well as nature of illness.

eastbono

popperinthere wrote: »

I think if the serious illness is debilitating enough they may be entitled to disability allowance? all forms in that respect need to be signed by a doctor I believe. My guess is that once they applied to go on sickness benefit they put a desk lackey on to investigate and decided to cut all payments because of technicalities. An appeal could take a long time so they'd need to do it sooner rather than later and definitely go into citizens information. Last resort would be to contact your local politician and explain things (my friend's sister was waiting for a response from the social for 8 months before the politician she contacted finally helped things along)

You can only qualify for illness benefit if you have enough contributions overall and enough contributions in the governing year. Once an illness benefit is registered and the person is in receipt of jobseekers then the jobseekers is closed as you cannot be available and looking for work if you have an illness benefit claim. There is no point in appealing if a person does not qualify for illness benefit.

BTW I dont know of any position in the Dept of Social Protection called "desk lackey".

legendary.xix

The serious illness is cancer. All going well it is treatable over the next few months and the person should recover from it. For now, the person does not qualify for illness benefit. Job seekers allowance has been cut due to the illness. I was shocked to hear the person wasn't entitled to anything. It's bad enough for someone to have a serious illness with out the stress of money being cut when someone is looking to overcome and illness and hopefully get back to work when possible.

eastbono

legendary.xix wrote: »

The serious illness is cancer. All going well it is treatable over the next few months and the person should recover from it. For now, the person does not qualify for illness benefit. Job seekers allowance has been cut due to the illness. I was shocked to hear the person wasn't entitled to anything. It's bad enough for someone to have a serious illness with out the stress of money being cut when someone is looking to overcome and illness and hopefully get back to work when possible.

They should apply to their community welfare officer for supplementary welfare allowance immediately. Tell them to bring the letter from illness benefit stating they do not qualify with them. They will still need to submit certs every week. Whilst they are on swa they could apply for disability allowance.

legendary.xix

eastbono wrote: »

They should apply to their community welfare officer for supplementary welfare allowance immediately. Tell them to bring the letter from illness benefit stating they do not qualify with them. They will still need to submit certs every week. Whilst they are on swa they could apply for disability allowance.

Sounds like clear and good advice. Thank you.