UK state pension

The years you pay PRSI in Ireland count towards your Irish pension

the years you pay SI in the UK count towards your UK pension

Only the UK (bizarrely) allows overlapping payment

This was the letter we had received after my wife's initial application of the cf83 form. She didn't have the 3 years residency nor the 3 years national insurance contributions. But were I have marked with an x is how we satisfied the residency condition. We sent lots of payslips, letter from jobs and so on to prove she worked in Ireland. And then as you seen, recently I wrote up that we got a letter (after more have a year and half waiting) that she got accepted and also to pay class 2. In order to pay class 2 she had to be working immediately before leaving the UK and be working in Ireland now.

I think your first step is to get the national insurance number. I would maybe chance going up north to a job centre, people have been successful in getting it that way. Otherwise put a complaint in that the HMRC have not been much help in retrieving your wife national insurance number.

You say you didn't send in a cf83 form so maybe you missed the buyback for 16 years but worse case you can still buy back the last 6 years so it's still very worth it.

If you can get over the 10 years that the minimum to qualify for a pension. Something like £70 - £90 a week. When added to an Irish pension is a nice top up.

Also maybe at this point you could hire a company to deal with it for you. Maybe they have connections in HMRC that could help with getting the national insurance number and helping with the residency condition.

It's a long process and you need the time to do the paperwork then it's a waiting game.

We had given up on my wife's application back in July 2024 (well my wife had given up a year before that 😂) but then in Oct 24 we decided to give it another go.

Good luck with it 👍

That's no problem ☺️, if you look below it shows that you really just had to live in the UK for three years and not even have paid any national insurance contributions in order to start paying voluntary national insurance contributions.

It's doesn't say about any minimum time spent in the UK but I would think you at least needed to get a NI number. And to get this (if I remember right) you had to prove you where at least living there at the time. Then because of agreements with EU and Turkey you can use residence in those countries to help you to qualify for the three years and to start paying NI.

Ireland would have similar scenarios as I know my wife had to show she lived in the UK so she could qualify for maternity benefit. As she didn't have enough years in Ireland or something along those lines.

We both lived in the UK for 2 years 9 months but because I started my job straight away (why we moved over) I managed to pay "4" years contributions. So even though my residency was the same as hers I was covered cause I paid the 4 years NI. So didn't have to go down the residency route.

On the other hand my wife didn't get a job straight away and then it was part time so she only managed to pay 2 years (104 NI) NI contributions.

And hence why we went the residency route.

So it is definitely residency OR payments of National insurance contributions. So once you can get your wife's National insurance number or prove somehow that she lived over there I can't see why she couldn't follow this.

I'd advise anyone making a payment for specific years, to also sent a letter spelling out what you want. Saves a phone call and, at least in my case, the letter was dealt with quickly.

Follow on from original post

Just an update on my wife's case. I am happy to say it's all done. We had sent the payment for all the class 2 payments. It got processed straight away but unfortunately a big lump went into a class 3 year which we didn't want. So we were able to add further information to our complaint on the HMRC website.

So today it was updated and finalised. (Within 15 working days of complaint)

She was able to add 10 years to her 2 years that she worked in the UK.

Going forward (another 23 years 😂) I don't think she will pay the class 3.

But to get over the 10 years minimum was what we had set out to do.

£86 per week on top of the Irish pension is great especially for a small cost of around €2400 for 12 years.

I've got that message for the last few hours but I've found out that if you log in with your 6 digit PIN rather than biometrically it opens up for me.

I have been getting this message ever since my complaint was resolved. The response to the complaint said they would update my account in 48hrs but that was two weeks ago and still nothing. At least the email I got back clearly lays out the correct allocation of my payments so I'm not as worried as I once was.

Mine was like that too and then over a few weeks everything fell into one consecutive line. Now I'm just waiting for the demand for 2025/26.

My wife received an email today from HMRC in regards to her complaint. It outlined everything and confirmed payments were put against the years requested.

We also have been offered £30 compensation due to time taken for issues to be resolved. We will put that towards the class 2 for this year.

I encourage people to follow my write up on how to complain online as you get a reference number and the pension ombudsman can get involved if you are not satisfied. (Therefore the HMRC take it serious)

With phonecalls there is no guarantee anything will be done and no consequences if not.

Posting a letter takes time and then they don't get back for ages if they ever do.

Some information they gave on the email we received.