Irish HR and payroll: a starter guide
Reviewed by Mellow Editorial Team, HR & payroll content team
Irish HR and payroll compliance starts with registering as an employer with Revenue, operating a real-time PAYE payroll, and meeting your statutory obligations around leave, contracts and insurance. Get those foundations right and the rest is manageable.
Register as an employer before you pay anyone
Before you process a single payslip, register as an employer with Revenue through ROS (Revenue Online Service). You will need your company's tax registration number and, if you are hiring from outside Ireland, you may need to register separately for PAYE, PRSI and USC.
Each new employee must provide you with their PPS number so Revenue can issue a Revenue Payroll Notification (RPN). The RPN tells your payroll software what tax credits and cut-off points apply to that individual. Without it, you must operate emergency tax — which means higher deductions for the employee and more admin for you to correct later.
How Irish payroll tax works
Ireland uses a tax credit system rather than a personal allowance. Every employee has credits that reduce the amount of income tax they owe. The standard rate of income tax is 20% on earnings up to roughly €44,000 for a single person; earnings above that are taxed at 40%. Tax credits sit on top of that calculation and reduce the final liability.
On top of income tax, two further deductions apply to almost every payroll:
USC (Universal Social Charge) is charged in bands: 0.5%, 2%, 3% and 8%, depending on income level. Low earners below the threshold are exempt.
PRSI (Pay Related Social Insurance) for Class A employees — the standard classification for most employees — runs at approximately 4.1% from the employee and 11.15% from the employer. Employer PRSI is a significant on-cost and worth building into your total compensation budgets from the outset.
Every time you pay an employee — weekly, fortnightly or monthly — you must submit a payroll file to Revenue on or before payday. This is the real-time reporting requirement. There is no end-of-month catch-up; late submissions can attract penalties.
Contracts, leave and your core HR obligations
Every employee in Ireland is entitled to a written statement of core terms within five days of starting, and a full written contract within one month. These are legal requirements under the Employment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2018, not optional good practice.
Key statutory minimums to know:
- Annual leave: 4 working weeks per year for a full-time employee.
- Public holidays: 10 per year, with entitlements that depend on the employee's working pattern.
- Minimum wage: set by the government and updated periodically — check the current rate with the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) before hiring.
- Notice periods: minimum statutory notice applies from week one, scaling with length of service.
Probationary periods, disciplinary procedures and grievance processes should all be documented. The WRC can investigate complaints against employers, and a missing contract or undocumented procedure is a weak position to be in.
Pension auto-enrolment is coming in 2026
Ireland is introducing mandatory pension auto-enrolment, branded My Future Fund, from 2026. Employers will be required to enrol eligible employees automatically and make matching contributions. If you do not already offer a workplace pension, this is the time to understand what will be required of you — both in terms of contribution rates and the payroll infrastructure needed to process them correctly.
Employers who already run occupational pension schemes will need to check whether those schemes meet the criteria to satisfy the new requirements.
Staying compliant day to day
Payroll compliance in Ireland is ongoing, not a one-time setup. A practical checklist for any pay period:
1. Pull the latest RPNs from Revenue before running payroll — they update when an employee's circumstances change.
2. Calculate PAYE, USC and PRSI correctly for each employee, including employer PRSI.
3. Submit the payroll file to Revenue on or before payday via ROS.
4. Pay any liabilities to Revenue by the due dates — typically the 23rd of the following month for monthly remitters.
5. Keep payroll records for at least six years.
HR records — contracts, disciplinary correspondence, leave records — should be retained for a similar period and stored securely in line with GDPR obligations.
If you are running payroll across multiple countries, the administrative overhead multiplies quickly. How Mellow runs payroll across six countries on one platform covers how employers typically manage that complexity without running parallel systems.
The Irish system is not uniquely complicated, but the real-time reporting requirement means errors surface quickly. Building accurate, consistent processes from the start costs far less than correcting a backlog of late submissions or resolving a WRC complaint.
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