Section 57 of the regulations in question provides that where, for any two complete consecutive social insurance contribution years, there are no employment contributions paid or credited in respect of an insured person, a contribution cannot be credited to such person until a further 26 employment contributions have been paid in respect of him or her.
Section 58 provides that employment contributions shall be credited to an insured person in respect of days of incapacity for work, of proved unemployment and on receipt of certain social welfare benefits.
The reason for this limitation on the award of credited contributions relates to the general principle in the social insurance system that there should be a reasonable link between entitlement to benefit and a recent participation in the active labour force. This reflects the contributory principle and the "pay as you go" nature of the social insurance system in Ireland.
Awarding credited contributions to where there is no recent record of insurable employment would undermine the basis of this system and have serious implications for qualification for benefits and expenditure from the social insurance fund.
Special arrangements are in place to protect the accumulated social security rights of persons who travel between European Economic area, EEA, countries. Furthermore, the regulations governing social insurance contribution records make special arrangements to accommodate volunteer development workers.
Also there are a number of bilateral agreements with some non-EEA countries to safeguard the accumulated rights to certain social welfare benefits of persons who spend time in these countries. However, this might not extend to short-term benefits such as disability benefit.
If an individual does not have a sufficient number of contributions to qualify for an insurance based benefit such as disability benefit, he or she may subject to a means test be able to qualify for disability allowance and further details in relation to this can be obtained from my Department.