Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005 section 220

Qualified person

Section 220 establishes who qualifies to receive child benefit.

• The person with whom a qualified child normally resides is the "qualified person" entitled to claim child benefit for that child.
• The Minister may make rules to determine who a child normally resides with, and a child cannot be treated as normally residing with more than one person at a time.
• Where a child lives in an institution and contributions are made towards their maintenance, the child is generally treated as residing with the person they would normally live with outside the institution — unless that person has abandoned or deserted the child, in which case the child is treated as residing with the head of the household they would otherwise belong to.
• A qualified person must be habitually resident in the State to receive child benefit, unless they are a person employed by the defence forces on international assignment (or certain EU/EEA workers and others with equivalent entitlements).