Ireland has statutory, supplementary, and state-sponsored employee benefits. Learn about each benefit, how you can manage them, and more.
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Navigating employee benefits in Ireland can feel like a balancing act.
From mandatory entitlements like annual leave and sick pay to supplementary benefits like health insurance, there’s a lot to consider.
In this guide, we’ll break it all down. You’ll discover what’s required, what’s optional, and how to make it all work for your team.
Employee benefits in Ireland include:
Let’s discuss these in detail:
In Ireland, certain employee benefits are mandated by law. As of 2025, these include:
Let’s go over each one quickly:
As an employer, you are not legally required to provide an occupational pension scheme at the moment.
However, you must ensure your employees have access to a Personal Retirement Savings Account (PRSA) in the following cases:
What to know about PRSAs:
We recommend you go through The Pensions Authority’s PRSA guide to understand employer obligations in more detail.
Ireland’s Auto Enrolment Retirement Savings Scheme, My Future Fund, will start from 30 September 2025.
Employers will be legally required to contribute to this scheme on behalf of their employees. Employees will also be required to contribute for a specific period before they can opt out.
However, if you already have an occupational pension scheme that covers all employees from their day of hire, your business would be exempt from the Auto Enrolment scheme.
If you only have PRSAs, you must either prepare for Auto Enrolment or offer an occupational pension scheme like mentioned above.
Check out our detailed Irish Auto Enrolment guide to learn how you can prepare for this new pension scheme.
Kota is a modern employee benefits platform that lets you set up and manage employer pensions compliantly.
Just enrol your team and automate pension rollout without any paperwork or administrative overheads. It’s that simple!
We partner with Irish Life to offer a defined contribution pension scheme — the Irish Life EMPOWER Personal Lifestyle Strategy. The scheme allows your team to manage investment risks and allocate their investments to suitable funds that match their needs.
Ready to empower your team? Book a free demo today!
Pay Related Social Insurance (PRSI) is a government-mandated insurance contribution that funds social welfare benefits and pensions in Ireland.
It’s considered an employee benefit because it gives your team access to crucial state benefits like the Maternity Benefit, State Pension, etc., providing financial security and protection.
As an employer, you’re legally required to deduct the correct amount of PRSI from your employees’ earnings and to submit it, along with your own PRSI contribution, to the Revenue as part of the PAYE (Pay As You Earn) system.
The amount is decided based on your employee’s pay and type of work (social insurance class) — but it’s usually 4.1% of income for anyone earning over €352 a week.
You deduct your employee’s amount from their salary and add your portion of 11.15% before making the total contribution.
The amount deducted from your employee’s salary is always displayed on their payslip.
Ireland’s Department of Social Protection (DSP) strictly monitors PRSI payments.
Every year, DSP inspectors may arrive at your workplace to check whether you:
Failure to comply with PRSI regulations can result in hefty penalties and reputational damage.
The Irish government has announced changes to employee and employer PRSI contribution rates as part of the 2025 Budget. Employee PRSI rates will remain unchanged at 4.1% until 1st October 2025, after which they will increase to 4.2%. Employer rates, however, have increased to 8.9% for weekly earnings up to €527 and 11.15% for weekly earnings above €527, effective from 1st January 2025 onwards.
Check out the government’s PRSI guide for employers for more information.
Annual leave is paid time off from work. All Irish employees, including full-time, part-time, temporary, and casual staff, are entitled to it.
Typically, it’s at least four weeks, or 20 days, of paid leave each year.
However, it depends on how much time your employee has worked in a leave year — which runs from 1 April to 31 March.
Your employees can calculate their annual leave entitlement in three ways and use the method that gives them the highest entitlement. The three methods are:
As an employer, you can offer additional paid leave days (beyond the legal requirement) as an incentive.
In Ireland, employees are entitled to various statutory leaves for family and caregiving purposes.
You aren’t legally required to pay for these. Most of them are covered by social insurance (PRSI). With that said, you can compensate your employees for taking them.
Time spent on statutory leave is treated as if the employee was working, so it doesn’t reduce their annual leave entitlement.
Protective leave in Ireland includes the following:
Under the Sick Leave Act 2022, your employees are entitled to seven paid sick days in 2025 (this will increase to 10 paid sick days from 2026 onwards).
You should pay your employees 70% of their daily wage up to a maximum of €110 per day.
To be eligible, an employee must have at least 13 weeks of continuous service. A doctor must also certify that they are unfit to work.
As an employer, you can offer your own sick pay arrangement, provided it is more favourable than the statutory sick pay (SSP) scheme. Your employees can’t receive statutory sick pay in addition to the benefits from your scheme.
Besides the legally mandated benefits, offering supplementary perks can set your business apart. These benefits are optional but highly valued by employees and can help with retention and morale.
Some examples of supplementary benefits include:
Private health insurance is one of the most valuable perks you can offer your team.
According to the 2024 SHRM Employee Benefits Survey, 88% of employees consider healthcare an extremely important benefit.
It’s a win-win: faster access to specialists, shorter waiting times, and better care for your employees, while also making your company a more attractive place to work.
These health insurance plans usually include inpatient and outpatient services, maternity care, and mental health support — basically everything your team needs to stay on top of their health.
Some companies even extend coverage to employees’ families, making this benefit even more impactful.
Since private medical insurance is considered a benefit-in-kind in Ireland, your employees are taxed on the value of their premiums.
Managing employee health insurance doesn’t have to be a headache.
Kota makes it simple to set up, enrol, and manage private health insurance for your Irish team.
Ready to make private health insurance stress-free?
Join Kota today and see how easy it is to support your team’s well-being.
Income protection insurance plans (permanent health insurance) provide replacement income for your employees who cannot work due to illness or injury.
How can you provide income protection?
Some employees receive life assurance plans as part of their benefits package.
Why provide life assurance schemes?
Life assurance provides financial support to your employee's dependents in the event of their unexpected passing.
Generally, the sum assured is around four times the employee’s base salary. Your employees are usually covered under the plan for the duration of their employment with you.
Since life assurance (or even life insurance) schemes are established under trust, the dependents can quickly receive the benefits.
You can offer separate optical and dental insurance plans to your employees in addition to private health insurance plans.
Aren't dental and vision already part of your employees’ health insurance package?
Most health insurance plans don’t cover optical and oral health. You may need to pay extra to obtain dental and vision plans for your employees.
In Ireland, you can offer company stock as compensation for your employees or workers.
The most common stock option programs are:
Want to encourage a workplace fitness culture?
Offer fitness benefits!
Maybe you could offer a free onsite gym for your employees.
Or perhaps, partner with local gyms for free or discounted employee memberships.
You could offer additional benefits like:
Some fitness benefits, like gym memberships, are considered benefit-in-kind, and your employees can be taxed on their value.
You generally don’t pay tax on benefits provided to your employees — the tax amounts are reduced from your employees’ gross pay.
You can offer flexible work benefits to your workforce, such as compressed work weeks during the summer, flexible working hours, and work-from-home days.
Some employers even offer their employees a home-office stipend!
These stipends help your employees meet work-related expenses like the cost of internet and telephone bills.
Your employees don’t have to pay tax on home-office stipends for up to €3.20 per day.
The Irish government passed the Work-Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Bill 2022. It introduces more work-life balance provisions to Irish employment law, such as an employee’s right to request flexible working arrangements.
This government initiative allows you to purchase bicycles and safety equipment worth up to €1,250 (€1,500 for an e-bike and €3000 for cargo/ecargo bikes) for your employees.
Your employees can then repay the cost from their salary before taxes, helping them save on the purchasing cost.
An Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) is a confidential support service to help employees address personal or work-related challenges that may impact their well-being or job performance.
What does it cover?
EAPs generally focus on helping your employees resolve personal problems that may affect their work performance. These include substance abuse, child and elder care, financial and legal trouble, and relationship issues.
Some EAPs also provide adoption assistance, nurse advice lines, and even support staff who have faced accidents and other traumatic incidents at the workplace.
Under this benefit scheme, you can pre-purchase public transit tickets and allow your employees to pay them from their pre-tax wages.
You can manage these programs in-house or through third-party vendors.
Some ways you can offer these benefits are:
Want to upskill your team?
Offer them training and development courses (through in-house or external providers).
Your employees can sign up for professional memberships, mentor programs, and online courses.
Your employees don’t have to pay tax on these benefits when the training:
The Irish state also provides your employees with certain benefits.
Let’s take a look at some of them:
A person above 65 years is eligible for the State Pension (Contributory) if they:
For more information, check out our in-depth guides on the two pension schemes:
The state issues an Invalidity Pension for those who couldn’t work for at least 12 months — typically someone who received illness benefits for a minimum of 12 months.
The receiver must make enough social insurance (PRSI) contributions and satisfy other conditions, such as being ineligible for work.
A widow/widower can receive a pension if all contribution conditions have been met on either spouse’s PRSI records as of the date of death.
The catch?
The two PRSI records can’t be amalgamated to qualify for the pension.
Any ordinarily resident person in Ireland and some visitors can access public health services for free or at a subsidised cost.
Who’s an ordinarily resident person?
Ordinarily resident people are those who have lived in Ireland for at least one year or who intend to live there for at least one year.
They have two types of eligibility for public health services:
Limited eligibility means your employees don’t get free general practitioner (GP) services and must pay for prescribed medicines.
However, they get access to public hospital services for free or at a subsidised cost.
Your employees under 66 years old who suffer from an illness that prevents them from working may be eligible for an Illness Benefit.
Their illness must be certified by a medical practitioner, and they must have enough PRSI contributions to be eligible for this benefit.
In 2025, Illness Benefit is €244 for employees with average weekly earnings of €300 or higher.
The Maternity Benefit is a social welfare payment made by the government to women who:
It’s usually paid for 26 weeks, coinciding with the statutory maternity leave period. In 2025, it’s €289 a week for 26 weeks.
As an employer, you must consider several factors when managing an employee benefits scheme:
Let’s answer some common questions on employee benefits:
Employee benefits are additional perks or forms of compensation you provide to your employees in addition to their regular wages or salary.
Some examples include retirement contributions, health insurance, work flexibility, and paid leave.
These benefits can be mandatory (such as statutory leave) or optional (like additional perks offered by employers).
In Ireland, you’re legally required to provide certain benefits. These are known as mandatory benefits.
Beyond the legal requirement, offering employee benefits helps:
Full-time employees residing in Ireland are typically entitled to statutory benefits such as annual leave, sick leave, and maternity or paternity leave.
Independent contractors, on the other hand, are not eligible for these benefits, as they are self-employed and not covered under employment laws for employees.
You must classify your employees correctly to avoid misclassification risks.
What happens if you misclassify employees?
Misclassifying employees as contractors can lead to serious consequences:
Employee benefits aren’t just a box to tick — they’re a way to invest in your team’s well-being, engagement, and loyalty.
By blending statutory entitlements with thoughtful supplementary perks, you can create a workplace where employees thrive.
Ready to simplify benefits management?
Kota helps you streamline pensions, health insurance, and more, all in one place.
Trevor Gardiner QFA, RPA, APA in Insurance. With 23 years of experience in Financial Services, I have a strong passion for Health Insurance and Pensions.
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