Sorry, its long and I'm probably not making much sense, but I wanted to get it off my chest as it has been drivng us up the wall for a year and a half now
DP, DS and I moved to Ireland a year and a half ago, in July.
We had a week before DP's job started and went round the tax office and the social welfare office to get infor on tax credits, child benefit and to get our PPSN (Irish Social Security type Number) It turns out that the PPS numbers can only be applied for on certain days at certain times, so we had to wait until after DP had started his job to go back down to apply.
This meant that we could not apply for CB as we didn't have our PPS number.
Anyway, around two weeks later - our numbers arrived in the post, ans we went back downt o the social office to apply for Child Benefit.
Took the form home - filled it in and returned it to the office - where we were told that we had to supply a letter from a doctor (which we didn't have yet) or the Garda to prove that DS (who was standing in the office with us) was actually living with us in Ireland.
The waiting list for getting a doctor was shocking - most of the ones we visited that were within range of our house (no car) were full and the wait for a space was about 6months.
SO, we went to the Garda station and asked them to give us the form they are supposed to have (according to the social office) and fill it in to prove that they have seen DS and that he is living in Ireland. It turns out, they haven't got a clue what we are talking about and tell us to go back to the office.
We did this for about 4 months - going back and forth because the Social Office didn't believe that the Gards didn't have the form.
So, we were asked again to prove that DS was resident in Ireland with us. So, we got a meeting with someone in the social office to get it all sorted. We brought his Birth Cert, his passport and his PPSN and him along to the interview and they said it wasn't enough proof
They said the only other way to prove his residence was to get a letter from his Nursery (which we couldn't afford to send him to) We asked how long he had to be there to be considered as proof and he said 3months
I wrote to the Child Benefit folk back in the UK to ask for assistance. I had phoned them and the tax credit folk before we moved to tell them that we were leaving the country and gave them the dates for stopping the payments. They agreed to send a letter in to the Social office in Ireland to show that we had stopped all payments from the UK for DS and were now seeking CB from them in Ireland. The letter arrived after 6weeks.
This, apparently, still wasn't proof and they put our claim on hold until they had spoken to the folk in the UK.
After 3 months or so, we got asked to come in for a meeting to discuss the ongoing claim. We were told that we still needed proof. We went through all that we had given them and they said it wasn't enough, so we had to go see if we could find more
We finally got a Doctor, and at DS's first appointment, we asked if he would fill in the form we needed to prove his residency and the Doctor told us that his surgery no longer did this as it required too much time.
We got a letter from the Social office some time later with our options - we could either stop the claim and try to claim again in 6months or We could prove DS's residency in Ireland by sending in a bill that had his name on it !!! He's 4 btw.
Finally, In September DS started school. We filled int he form for the Social office and sent int he acceptance letter from his school - this was accepted as proof of residency and we finally got our stupid Child Benefit this month........whoooppeee
Seriously though, it shouldn't take that long should it??