advise about child benefit

[zaza7625]

Hi.
A week ago me and my family arrived in ireland, i have 4 eu citizen children,
we would like to apply for child benefit as quickly as possible,please advise me what to do and what kind of documents they require and if accepted how long the pending process continues?
thanks

[dalebutt]

You will need to apply PPS for your children, and yourself, and then apply for child benefit for them, the CB form normally comes with children's PPS or shortly after it.

[zaza7625]

You will need to apply PPS for your children, and yourself, and then apply for child benefit for them, the CB form normally comes with children's PPS or shortly after it.

thanks for reply.
As far as I know in order to get pps number for my eu children need proof of address, but to get child benefit I suppose even only mother's pps number would be satisfactory wouldn' it?
and one more, how long takes the child benefit pending process?
Thanks

[dalebutt]

That's correct, you only need to fill your details and your spouse's, and that includes ppsn when applying for CB assuming you have not applied for their ppsn, but when you apply for the ppsn first before CB, you will receive the children ppsn on the CB form as it comes together with it, on the CB form the child's details including childs ppsn will already be on it as well as the mother's details, you will have to complete the few details left on the form.

Child Benefit applications from persons who may qualify under EU regulation are taking several months to process, well at least I witnessed it when I was in living in Ireland, there were delays mainly by the requirements to get documents from the other EU country to confirm if the child benefit or its equivalent in the EU country is being paid, and there may be delays if the documents has to be translated I do not think much has changed though.

[Brigid from Ireland]

You need to complete the application form for child benefit and send it in straight away, as the payment may be backdated to when the form is received, so the sooner you send it the more back pay you will get when it is processed. So do not wait until you have all details, send it immediately. They will write to you asking for any missing information.

If one parent has a pps number use this number to complete the form, and list the name of the other parent and all children, saying that you are trying to get pps numbers for them.

The critical points are:

One parent needs to have a job in Ireland. So you send a payslip as proof that a parent works in Ireland, this gives you a right to child benefit at the Irish rate of payment. One day of work with a temporary employment agency gets you the necessary payslip and transfers many of your social welfare,health care and education rights to the responsibility of the Irish state.

You must educate your children. It is quite common for the child benefit office to send you a letter asking you to get the school to confirm that the children are attending school, so if they are not in a school yet you need to get a school place as soon as you can. Attending school is proof that the child is resident in Ireland. If you have a baby take the child to a social welfare local office and ask them to write a letter for child benefit saying that you have presented the baby in the office as proof that the child is in Ireland (They don't like doing this as it is additional work for them, they ask you to take the baby to a doctor to ask the doctor to write a letter saying he has seen the child, but the doctor charges 50 euro for the letter, and the social welfare office in your town can write it for free).

If you are getting child benefit from any other country, you must say this and the child benefit office will write to that country asking for it to be stopped.

If you get a poorly paid job you should apply for a medical card - free medcine and doctor for the family.

If you get a job which is more than 20 hours per week you should apply for Family Income Supplement.

Your wife is the EU citizen (I think) so she needs to get a job. If the jobs of one/both parents pay less than the relevant social welfare rate then she can go the the Community Welfare Officer, as an employed migrant EU worker, and ask to be 'topped up' to the rate that applies to her family - 188 for her, 124 for her spouse and 30 for each child, per week. So if she earns less than this she can ask for the extra to be paid to her to support the family. She might not get it, in which case she can appeal. (It might be wise to wait until you have your long term visa before doing this).