{"id":283473,"date":"2026-02-06T06:51:37","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T06:51:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/283473\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T06:51:37","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T06:51:37","slug":"deadline-looms-for-those-who-worked-in-uk-to-claim-extra-pension-years-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/283473\/","title":{"rendered":"Deadline looms for those who worked in UK to claim extra pension years \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thousands of Irish people who worked in the UK for a number of years have just weeks to apply for access to a future UK state pension<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Changes announced in the UK budget last November come into force from its new tax year on April 6th. Two, in particular, are relevant for Irish people who have worked in Britain or Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n

After April 6th, a person will need 10 years of paid national insurance before they are allowed to buy back additional years to fill gaps in their record and move closer to a full UK state pension.<\/p>\n

At present, anyone with three years of national insurance coverage in the UK is entitled to buy back social insurance cover, even if they are no longer living in the UK. <\/p>\n

From the same date, any purchase of additional years of national insurance cover will be at the higher Class 3 rate. Until now, people who worked until their departure from the UK and continued to work when they moved home or to a third country qualified for a much cheaper Class 2 rate.<\/p>\n

People looking to buy back cover for the past six years at Class 2 before the April 6th deadline will face a bill of \u00a3182 (\u20ac209) per year of national insurance purchased, compared to \u00a3907.40 (\u20ac1,042) under Class 3.<\/p>\n

If you are buying back six years, that is a difference of \u00a34,352.40 (\u20ac5,341).<\/p>\n

\u201cWe find that 23 per cent of our customers have more than 10 years\u2019 history,\u201d said John Ring of XtraPension, a Galway-based firm that has specialised in helping people in Ireland and elsewhere tap their entitlements in the UK.<\/p>\n

The flip side is that over three-quarters of applicants have less than a 10-year national insurance history. If they do not act before April 6th, they will not be able to buy back years in the future. And, as in Ireland, you need at least 10 years of social insurance cover to secure a minimum weekly UK pension payment.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0UK pension buyback: I cannot find my national insurance number – what should I do?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

However, Mr Ring said, if those people apply before the April 6th deadline to buy back national insurance cover for the past six years, they will be considered eligible to buy back further years in the future even if they still do not meet the 10-year threshold because they will have activated their registration before the new rules come into force. <\/p>\n

He advised anyone planning to do so not to leave things to the last minute as April 6th this year falls on Easter Sunday. \u201cThey really want to be getting things sorted by the end of March,\u201d Mr Ring said.<\/p>\n

The new rules bring the UK system broadly into line with what is available in Ireland for people looking to pay for voluntary PRSI cover. In Ireland, you need a minimum of 10 years\u2019 paid PRSI stamps to qualify to buy back additional PRSI cover voluntarily.<\/p>\n

You are also required to act within five years of the end of the last year in which you paid PRSI here and to date any voluntary PRSI back to when you stopped paying PRSI.<\/p>\n

Thousands of people who used to work in the UK and who applied before April last year to buy back up to 19 years of UK national insurance are still waiting to hear back from the UK authorities about those applications.<\/p>\n

That group is not affected by the latest rule change on UK state pensions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thousands of Irish people who worked in the UK for a number of years have just weeks to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283474,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[72,176,61,60,1612,174,175,1577,1962],"class_list":{"0":"post-283473","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-pension","13":"tag-personal-finance","14":"tag-personalfinance","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-work"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}