An onboarding checklist for Irish new starters
Reviewed by Mellow Editorial Team, HR & payroll content team
Getting a new employee set up correctly in Ireland means completing a specific sequence of tax, legal and administrative steps before and on their first day. Miss one and you may end up overtaxing the employee, falling foul of Revenue, or breaching employment law.
Before the start date
Issue a written contract. Under the Employment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2018, you must give new employees their core terms in writing within five days of starting. The full written statement of terms must follow within one month. Core terms include pay, hours, place of work and job title. Getting this signed before day one is good practice.
Register as an employer with Revenue. If this is your first hire, you need to register as an employer on ROS (Revenue Online Service) before you run any payroll. You will also need to register the employee.
Ask the employee for their PPSN. You need their Personal Public Service Number to look up their tax credits and issue payslips correctly. Without it, you must tax them on an emergency basis — a higher rate that benefits nobody.
Set up their payroll record. Once you have the PPSN, Revenue will issue a Revenue Payroll Notification (RPN) for that employee. The RPN tells you their current tax credits, standard rate cut-off point and USC status. Always pull the latest RPN before running the first payroll.
Day one administration
Complete any identity and right-to-work checks. There is no single statutory right-to-work check scheme in Ireland as there is in the UK, but you should keep a copy of the documents you used to verify identity and eligibility to work. For non-EEA nationals, check they hold the correct employment permit or visa.
Provide a staff handbook or written policies. Grievance and disciplinary procedures are required under the Code of Practice on Grievance and Disciplinary Procedures (SI 146 of 2000). Health and safety information, data protection notices and any relevant policies should also be handed over on day one.
Get bank details for payroll. Simple, but often forgotten until pay week.
Running the first payroll
Ireland uses real-time reporting. You must submit a payroll submission to Revenue via ROS on or before each payday — not monthly, not retrospectively. Each submission reports gross pay, tax deducted, USC deducted and PRSI contributions for every employee on that run.
The main deductions to calculate are:
- Income tax at 20% up to the employee's standard rate cut-off point (roughly €44,000 for a single person), and 40% above it. Note that Ireland uses tax credits rather than a personal allowance — the credit reduces the tax liability, not the gross income subject to tax.
- USC (Universal Social Charge) in bands: 0.5%, 2%, 3% and 8%, depending on income level.
- PRSI at approximately 4.1% for the employee (Class A) and 11.15% for you as the employer.
Employer PRSI is a real cost to factor into your total employment budget. A salary of €50,000 costs meaningfully more than €50,000 once employer PRSI is included.
Statutory entitlements to note immediately
Annual leave. Employees are entitled to 4 working weeks of paid annual leave per year under the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997. Part-year employees accrue leave proportionally.
Public holidays. There are ten public holidays in Ireland. Entitlement for part-time employees depends on hours worked.
Sick leave. The Sick Leave Act 2022 gives employees a right to a certain number of statutory sick days — check the current entitlement as it has been phased in over time.
Pension auto-enrolment. My Future Fund, Ireland's auto-enrolment scheme, is being introduced from 2026. If you are onboarding now, you should understand whether and when your new employee will be enrolled, and what contribution obligations this creates for you as an employer. Building this into your payroll process early avoids a scramble later.
Ongoing compliance after onboarding
Once the employee is in the system, the key ongoing obligations are:
- Pull a fresh RPN before each payroll run. Employees can update their tax credits at any time through myAccount, and Revenue pushes the updated RPN to you.
- Issue payslips on or before each payday. Payslips must itemise gross pay, each deduction and net pay.
- Keep payroll records for at least six years.
- Notify Revenue promptly if the employee leaves, using the cessation process in ROS, and issue a P45 equivalent record.
If you are hiring across multiple locations or want to understand how Mellow runs payroll across six countries on one platform, the real-time submission model in Ireland is one of the more straightforward in Europe — provided you follow the sequence correctly from the start.
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