Statutory sick pay in Ireland: the employer process
Reviewed by Mellow Editorial Team, HR & payroll content team
Statutory sick pay (SSP) in Ireland gives employees a legal right to paid sick leave for a set number of days each year, funded directly by the employer — not the State. Here is how the scheme works and what you need to do as an employer.
How many days you must pay
The Sick Leave Act 2022 introduced a phased rollout of statutory sick pay. By 2026, employees are entitled to ten paid sick days per year. These days do not have to be consecutive.
To qualify for a payment, an employee must:
- have at least 13 weeks of continuous service with you
- be certified as unfit for work by a GP (a medical certificate is required)
Employees who do not yet have 13 weeks of service have no statutory entitlement to paid sick leave from you, though your own contract terms may be more generous.
What rate you must pay
You must pay a minimum of 70% of the employee's normal daily wage, up to a daily cap. The cap is set at 70% of €110,000 divided by the number of working days in the year — work that out to roughly €110 per day at the cap, though the exact daily figure depends on how many working days apply in a given year.
Normal daily wage means the regular pay the employee would have earned had they been at work. Overtime, bonuses and commission are generally excluded from the calculation unless they form a regular and consistent part of earnings.
If you already run a more generous occupational sick pay scheme — full pay for a period, for example — that scheme satisfies the statutory floor, provided it is at least as good as the legal minimum on every measure.
The employer process, step by step
1. Receive the medical certificate. The employee must provide a GP certificate covering the days they are claiming. You can set a reasonable internal policy on how quickly that certificate must be submitted, but you cannot withhold statutory sick pay simply because a certificate arrived a day or two late without good reason.
2. Verify continuous service. Check that the employee has at least 13 weeks of service before the first sick day. If they do not, no statutory payment is due for this absence.
3. Calculate the payment. Identify the employee's normal daily wage, apply the 70% rate, and check it against the daily cap. Pay the resulting figure for each qualifying day.
4. Apply PAYE, USC and PRSI in the normal way. Statutory sick pay is treated as regular employment income. That means you run it through payroll, deduct income tax at 20% (standard rate) or 40% (higher rate) as applicable, apply USC at the relevant bands (0.5%, 2%, 3% or 8%), and deduct employee PRSI at 4.1%. You pay employer PRSI at 11.15% on top. There is no special sick-pay tax treatment — it simply sits in the employee's gross pay for the period.
5. Submit to Revenue in real time. Ireland operates real-time payroll reporting. You must submit a payroll submission to Revenue via ROS on or before the payday on which the sick pay is included. There is no deferred or separate reporting mechanism for SSP.
6. Record the days used. Keep a clear record of how many statutory sick days each employee has used in the leave year. Once an employee has used their ten days, any further sick absence in that year carries no statutory payment obligation — though again, your own policy may provide for more.
What happens if an employee disputes a decision
If an employee believes you have not paid statutory sick pay correctly, they can bring a complaint to the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC). The WRC can order payment of any arrears. There is no cap on the award in the same way there is with some other employment claims, so accurate record-keeping and prompt payment matter.
Keep documentation of medical certificates received, dates of absence, service start dates and payroll calculations. If a complaint is ever filed, you will need to produce those records quickly.
Interaction with social welfare illness benefit
Statutory sick pay from you and Illness Benefit from the Department of Social Protection are separate entitlements and do not run at the same time for the same days. Illness Benefit is a State payment that employees can claim after a waiting period and subject to their PRSI record. During the days covered by your statutory sick pay obligation, the employee is paid by you, not the State. If the absence runs beyond the statutory sick pay entitlement, the employee may then apply for Illness Benefit directly — that is a matter between them and the Department, and it carries no payroll obligation for you.
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