The back to work allowance scheme incentivises and encourages long-term unemployed people, lone parents and certain persons with disabilities to return to work by allowing them to retain their social welfare payment on a tapered rate over a three or four year period when they take up employment or self-employment. Participants in the scheme may also retain secondary benefits for the three or four year period.
An evaluation of the scheme carried out by independent consultants has shown that 78% of those who participated in the scheme had not returned to the live register. In the event that a participant does not claim back to work allowance for the full period of entitlement, that is, three years in the case of the employee strand or four years in the case of the self-employment strand, then, subject to satisfying all the usual conditions, he or she may apply for unemployment benefit or assistance.
The period spent participating in the back to work allowance scheme is not treated as a period of unemployment as the recipient is in insurable employment while receiving a payment under the scheme and there is no link back to the previous period of employment for the purposes of calculating the cumulative total days of the unemployment claim. A person who claims unemployment assistance after a period on the back to work allowance scheme would be entitled to a payment of a Christmas bonus after 15 months on such assistance payment.