I received my pension in April 2024, but only realised that I could buy more pension years in December 2025, so immediately sent a request to see how many years I could buy back.

I call the (UK government’s) international pension office on a weekly basis and they tell me they will pass my details on to the relevant section and I should hear back shortly.

My problem is that the deadline of April 5th is rapidly approaching. Where do I stand?

LN

The clock is certainly ticking with a cut-off at the weekend in terms of buying back historic years of UK state pension cover at a much lower cost.

Hundreds of thousands of Irish people are eligible for a UK state pension by virtue of having worked there at some point in their lives. Many have availed of the chance to buy back years of National Insurance (NI) cover to secure or enhance a UK state pension in retirement.

Because of a change in how the UK organised its state pension, it offered a one-off window that allowed people buy back up to 18 years of NI, but that has now passed. As of now, you can go back just six years.

And from next week, you will not even be able to do that unless you already have 10 years of NI payments. In addition, the much cheaper Class Two payments open to anyone who worked until they left the UK and were still working will disappear.

In future, all voluntary NI payments will be at Class Three, which is almost five times more expensive.

Your worry obviously, for all your effort, is that you have yet to get any formal written engagement with the UK International Pensions Centre. Promises over a phoneline are great but, when a hard deadline is looming, you really could benefit from something in writing.

I gather you do already have some state pension both in the UK and here. Also, when you applied for the Irish pension, you did include the near three years you worked in the UK.

John Ring at XtraPension, which works in this area, tells me that to qualify for the Class Two payments – £182 (€209) a year – you need to fulfil all three of these criteria:

you must have been working right until you left the UK;given you have slightly under three years’ work in the UK, you must have worked for the few months immediately following your return to Ireland to make up the three years; you must have been working in Ireland between the ages of 62 and 66.

If you fall short on any of those measures, you will only be eligible for Class Three contributions at £907.40 (€1,042) a year.

If you do qualify for Class Two, it will be for no more than four years, given you retired a couple of years ago. It could even be three years depending on when your birthday falls, as you cannot buy NI cover beyond your state pension age.

While you have since had confirmation, since we first spoke, that they have you in the files, it is only over the phone. It would be no harm either to email them so that you have a paper trail or submit a form CF83, an online version of which you can find on the UK government website here.

XtraPension says that once these extra years have been bought and allocated to your NI record (which can take another six months) then your weekly payment will be backdated to when you paid your money.

At that point, Ring tells me you will need to contact the Department of Social Protection here to advise them of a “material change” in your circumstances. They will adjust the Irish pension payment.

Please send your queries to Dominic Coyle, Q&A, The Irish Times, 24-28 Tara Street, Dublin 2, or by email to dominic.coyle@irishtimes.com with a contact phone number. This column is a reader service and is not intended to replace professional advice