Social Welfare Benefits
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-19
============================================================

Michael Moynihan (FF), Cork North-West

I thank the Deputy for the question and will speak a little on the information I received from the Department.
In relation to widows, widowers and the surviving pension, we have done some work on expanding the scheme for civil partners or cohabiting partners over the past while as well. The challenge is when somebody is widowed, a man or woman, they work and then get ill themselves, going from two incomes to one.
Ordinarily, if they got sick, they would be entitled to illness benefit, with the PRSI paid. This issue has come across most public representatives' desks. We meet families who are doing the right thing and making sure their contributions are up to date. Often, the families have been doubly hit. A partner may have passed away, the person is on the widow's or widower's pension and maybe raising a family on their own and working outside the home, and then illness strikes. When we look for help for them, we find we are unable to get anything for them. That is very challenging.
A number of cases have been raised in the House, in particular, over the past 12 months. The Deputy raised one case very eloquently last October or November when a commitment was given to look into the matter to see what could be done. If we look at this in its totality, where a widow or widower is getting the pension because their partner has passed away, the pension is based on the PRSI the partner paid. The surviving partner has contributed their own PRSI and is looking for illness benefit at a particular time. The PRSI contribution system should be able to cope with contributions from both partners. A number of senior Government spokespersons gave an undertaking to look at it. We need to be more proactive in relation to seeing if we can do something for families, even in the short term. I can think of half a dozen of cases where I assisted but was unable to progress the application.
I will take the Deputy's concerns back. A commitment was given to look at this last autumn. I will ask that it be looked at again and I will relay the seriousness of the matter as well. The Social Insurance Fund is made up, the first instance, by PRSI contributions. We could make the argument that PRSI has been paid by the partner to generate the contributory widow's or widower's pension and PRSI has been paid by the surviving partner. I will ask the Department to have a look at this in more detail.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-19/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:40+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-19