Three major Irish business compliance regimes activate in 2026. Auto-Enrolment for Pensions, the EU Pay Transparency Directive, and the Supreme Court’s Karshan ruling each carry serious consequences for employers who get them wrong — from automatic 5% pension contributions to mandatory pay disclosure to retroactive employment tax exposure. This page summarises what each requires, when it bites, and the pack that gets you compliant.
1. Auto-Enrolment Pension (My Future Fund) — launching 2026
Ireland’s Auto-Enrolment Retirement Savings Scheme, branded My Future Fund, brings every employer with workers aged 23–60 earning over €20,000 a year into a mandatory pension contribution regime. Employers must contribute 1.5% from launch, rising to 6% by year ten. Employees are automatically enrolled and can opt out only after six months.
Who’s affected: every Irish employer with employees who aren’t already in an occupational pension scheme. There is no exemption for small employers, sole traders with staff, or seasonal hires meeting the thresholds.
What you need to do: identify eligible employees, register with the National Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings Authority (NAERSA), set up the payroll mechanism for employer + employee contributions, and adjust employment contracts to reference the new arrangement.
→ Auto-Enrolment Pension Compliance Pack — information guide
2. EU Pay Transparency Directive — effective 7 June 2026
The EU Pay Transparency Directive (2023/970) must be transposed into Irish law by 7 June 2026. It introduces three obligations that change Irish employment practice materially:
- Pay transparency before employment: employers must disclose the starting pay or pay range in job postings or before an interview. Asking candidates about prior salary becomes prohibited.
- Pay reporting: employers with 100+ employees must report gender pay gap data; smaller thresholds apply progressively from 2027.
- Right to information: employees can request the average pay levels broken down by sex for workers performing equal work, and employers must respond within two months.
Who’s affected: all employers operating in Ireland, regardless of size, for the job-posting and right-to-information rules. The reporting obligation applies to employers with 100+ staff from 2027, expanding to 50+ by 2031.
What you need to do: revise recruitment templates and job adverts, train hiring managers on the prior-salary prohibition, set up pay-data record-keeping aligned with the Directive’s categories, and prepare a response procedure for information requests.
→ EU Pay Transparency Directive Readiness Pack — information guide
3. The Karshan ruling — live, evolving employment status risk
In October 2023 the Supreme Court’s decision in Revenue Commissioners v Karshan (Midlands) Ltd t/a Domino’s Pizza rewrote the test for employee vs. self-employed contractor status in Ireland. The Court set out a five-step framework that is now binding on Revenue, the Workplace Relations Commission, and the courts.
What this means: many contractors previously treated as self-employed for tax and employment purposes are likely to be reclassified as employees under the new test. The reclassification is retrospective — Revenue can pursue PAYE, USC and PRSI for the years the working relationship existed, plus interest and penalties.
Who’s affected: any Irish business engaging individuals on contracts for services (freelancers, consultants, drivers, instructors, locum staff, etc.) where the day-to-day reality of the engagement looks like employment.
What you need to do: audit current contractor relationships against the Karshan five-step test, decide whether to reclassify going forward, document the rationale, and update contracts and engagement processes accordingly.
→ Karshan Contractor Status Review — information guide
One conversation, all three covered
If your business is exposed to two or more of the above — which most employers with 10+ staff will be — it usually makes sense to handle them together. We can run a combined readiness assessment that maps the obligations onto your existing payroll, contracts and HR processes, and produce a single action plan with deadlines.
→ request a callback to scope a combined readiness pack