UK State Pension – Deadline Alert!
⏰Please, please read this if you have ever worked in the UK!⏰
Do you realise that you might be entitled to a UK state pension, as well as an Irish state pension, if you are an Irish resident who has previously worked in the UK? This could be worth up to £185 per week to you in your retirement years, based on current rates of payment.
Even if you only worked for a short time in the UK, you still might be eligible to receive a weekly pension, based on a portion of the maximum pension payment.
But here is where the magic can happen!
You are permitted to ‘purchase’ back years of National Insurance (NI). And this is the key to maximising your potential future pension payment.
The deadline of 05/04/2025 is crucial if you want to maximise your future pension payments!
The rules are soon to change.
Up until 05/04/2025, you can purchase 16 back years in National Insurance. After this date, you will only be able to purchase 6 back years in National Insurance.
To put this into context, having just 10 years of National Insurance contributions could entitle you to a weekly UK pension of £53. So by purchasing an additional 16 years of NI contributions, your future weekly pension payment would be much closer to the maximum of £185 per week.
What do I need to do?
There is of course, a cost to this:
- Time & effort in contacting the UK authorities, and filling out the paperwork
- Financial cost of purchasing the back years.
However, the potential benefits to be earned by you in your retirement years, could far out-weigh any financial payout to be suffered now.
How do I get started?
You have 2 options to start the ball rolling:
- There are companies out there who will do some of hard work for you, for a fee. You’ll be able to find them by doing an internet search for ‘Irish person claiming UK state pension’.
- Or you can contact the relevant UK Government Department yourself. There are phone numbers included in this link, so you can speak to a person over the phone about your particular situation, and receive specific advice on how best to proceed.
Please do not delay on getting started, as you risk losing out!
Although the deadline of April 5th 2025 may seem like an age away, I would highly recommend getting your application in the queue as soon as possible. Reports from the UK already suggest a backlog of cases to be processed and you may need time to gather all the necessary information to support your claim eg. your UK tax number.
And finally…
I realise that this topic may not be relevant to everyone reading this, but for those of you who have worked in the UK in the past, it is definitely worth following up on, and to find out what your options are. You’d be surprised what you might already be entitled to, despite having only very few years working in the UK. And by combining the actual years worked, with purchased ‘back years’, you could be entitled to a very nice additional pension in your retirement years. Your future self may be very glad that you took the time in 2024, to consider your UK pension!
For those of you looking for some additional information, this article may be of interest: Irish who worked in UK given additional time to claim years before pension concession ends (irishexaminer.com)
