To qualify for a social assistance payment you must satisfy a mean test and a habitual residence test. A means test is when the Department of Social and Family Affairs examines all your sources of income to test if they fall below a certain level. If you are married or living with another person as husband and wife, the means of your spouse or partner are also taken into account when you apply for a social assistance payment.
How your means is calculated and the amount of means you are allowed to have varies from payment to payment. Sometimes a certain amount of income or income from particular sources is not taken into account. Income not taken into account is often referred to as "income disregards".
If you are getting a social insurance payment, you do not have to satisfy a means test. However, your spouse or partner's income can affect increases in your payment for an adult dependant or child dependant. In the case of social insurance payments, where capital is held jointly by you and your spouse or partner, half of the value is assessed as belonging to your spouse or partner and assessed in the means test for an Increase for a Qualified Adult or an Increase for a Qualified Child. More information on the assessment of a qualified adult's income for social insurance payments is available in our document Claiming for an adult dependant.
The means test for a social assistance payment can be a complex calculation, here we look at some of the general items that are taken into account in the means test.
The means test examines the following types of income:
The means test assesses all cash income that you expect to get in the forthcoming year. In practice, this is usually assessed by calculating the income you actually received in the previous year. Among the cash income that is assessed is any income from employment or self-employment, including farm income, income from a social security pension from another country and maintenance. More information can be found in our document How to assess maintenance as means.
Most social welfare payments and Health Service Executive payments may not be taken into account, for example, Child Benefit, Disablement Pension and Domiciliary Care Allowance. More information about cash income not included in the means test is available in our document cash income and social welfare payments.
However, if one of a couple is claiming Jobseeker's Allowance (JA) and the other is getting of one of the social welfare payments listed below, the total amount paid to the couple cannot exceed the maximum amount paid to one person (including dependants) on one social welfare payment. However, you can choose the higher-rate payment as the primary payment.
Income from employment:
How your income from employment or self employment is assessed depends on the payment you are getting. When assessing your income from employment the following are always deducted from your gross earnings:
In the case of self-employment:
There are additional income disregards for individual payments, for example: €120 per week of rehabilitative earnings is not taken into account for Disability Allowance (DA) and Blind Pension (BP).
There are also additional income disregards for Carer's Allowance, Rent Supplement, Pre-Retirement Allowance, State Pension (Non-Contributory) and One-Parent Family Payment.
The assessment of income from employment for Jobseeker's Allowance is a little more complex. More information is available in our document How Jobseeker's Allowance is affected by income from employment.
Income from working as a home-help may not be taken into account in the means test for certain social welfare payments.
Income tax and the income levy are not usually deducted from your income from employment, except in the assessment of Family Income Supplement and in the assessment of benefit and privilege for Jobseeker's Allowance and benefit and privilege for Supplementary Welfare Allowance.
The house in which you live is not included in the assessment of your means unless you are getting an income from it. If you have rented a room in the house, that income is assessed. However, if you are getting an State Pension (Non-Contributory) or a Widow's/Widower's (Non-Contributory) Pension and not renting the room means that you would be living alone, the income is not assessed at all.
If you sell your home, the proceeds of the sale would normally be taken into account. However, if you are getting one of the following payments and you sell your house in order to buy or rent more suitable alternative accommodation or to go into a nursing home or to move in with a person who is getting Carer's Allowance for you, the first €190,460.71 of the sale proceeds is not taken into account.
However, the proceeds of the sale may be taken into account if your entitlement to a nursing home subvention is being assessed.
Capital includes property (excluding your own home), savings and investments. If you own property that you are not personally using or you have investments or any other form of capital, the value is assessed, using a standard formula. You may or may not be getting an income from the property or investment.
The property and investments that may be assessed under this heading include savings in a bank account (or anywhere else), a house that you have let and stocks and shares. If you or your spouse or partner saves a portion of your social welfare payment each week, these savings as well as savings from most other sources will be taken into account as part of your means.
The standard formula for assessing the value for all social welfare payments (except Disability Allowance and Supplementary Welfare Allowance) is as follows:
| Capital |
Weekly means assessed |
| First €20,000 | Nil |
| Next €10,000 | €1 per €1,000 |
| Next €10,000 | €2 per €1,000 |
| Balance | €4 per €1,000 |
If you have a joint account with your spouse or partner, legally the total amount in the account is owned by each of you. Therefore it can be assessed in full against each of you. However, if both you and your spouse or partner are getting means tested payments it will be assessed on a shared basis or against only one of you.
If you are one of a couple and apply for State Pension (Non-Contributory), Blind Pension or Carer's Allowance your combined capital is halved and this lower amount is assessed using the formula above. After you apply the formula the resulting amount is doubled to get your means from capital.
| Example |
|
John has €20,000 savings and his wife Mary has €20,000 savings, thay also have a joint account with €10,000. Mary has applied for Carer's Allowance. €20,000 €20,000 €10,000 = €50,000 €50,000 ÷ 2 = €25,000 €25,000 assessed using the formula above = €5 €5 x 2 = €10 John and Mary's weekly capital means is assessed as €10 |
For people seeking asylum or leave to remain who are living in direct provision accommodation, the weekly value of direct provision is assessed as means. Direct provision is assessed as follows in 2010:
Claimant - €176.90
Adult dependant - €111
Child dependant - €20.20 (per child)
The current weekly value of direct provision was set by the Health Service Executive (HSE). It is based on the appropriate maximum Supplementary Welfare Allowance rate less €19.10 for an adult and €9.60 for a child.
Your means under the various headings (for example, cash income, employment and capital) are added together to find your total means. Your means may be halved if you are married or cohabitating - see below. For most means-tested payments, the rate of social welfare payment you can get, if any, is reduced on a sliding scale according to your means.
However, if you are applying for or getting JA, Preta, FA or DA, your total weekly means is subtracted from the maximum weekly rate of Allowance for your situation to find out how much you will get.
Note: The maximum Allowance for your situation is the maximum rate of JA, Preta, FA or DA and any increases for your adult dependant and child dependants. If you are married or cohabitating and your means are halved, an increase for a qualified adult is not included in the maximum payment for your situation and you will only get a half-rate increase for each qualified child - see below.
If you are under 25 and applying for JA your age can also determine the maximum payment for your situation.
Means from capital
If you are one of a couple and apply for State Pension (Non-Contributory), Blind Pension or Carer's Allowance your combined capital is halved and this lower amount is assessed using the standard formula. The resulting amount is doubled to get your means from capital - see 'Capital' above.
Total means
In general, if you are one of a couple (this includes, a married couple or a man and woman living together as husband and wife) then your means are taken to be half of the total means of yourself and your spouse or partner. A cohabiting couple is a man and woman living together as husband and wife. Read here for a more detailed definition of a cohabiting couple.
However, if you are getting Jobseeker's Allowance, Pre-Retirement Allowance or Farm Assist your means are halved only when your spouse/partner is getting a social welfare payment (except Child Benefit, and Disablement Pension), HSE payment, or on a FAS or VTOS course and getting an allowance in his/her own right. Disability Allowance is assessed in the same way but if your spouse/partner is getting Family Income Supplement your means will not be halved.
To find the actual amount of JA, PRETA, FA or DA you will get, your total household means is deducted from the maximum payment (usually this is the personal rate including any increases for adult and child dependants). If your means are halved, you will not get an increase for a qualified adult but you will get a half-rate increase for each qualified child. More information can be found in our document on the means test for Jobseeker's Allowance.
Contact the section in the Department of Social and Family Affairs that pays the payment you are applying for.
You can also find more information in the Department's Freedom of Information guidelines about: