Ireland Auto-Enrolment Employer Cost 2026 EN

Ireland's automatic enrolment scheme, My Future Fund, started with the January 2026 pay run after the regulations were signed on 22 December 2025. This extension turns an Irish payroll into the employer cost, the Irish way.

The mistake it exists to stop: EUR 20,000 is the eligibility trigger, not a lower band. It decides who is enrolled — employees aged 23 to 60, earning over EUR 20,000, not already in a workplace pension — and nothing more. Once an employee is in, the employer contributes 1.5% of gross pay from the first euro, capped at EUR 80,000 of salary. UK-shaped calculators and general chatbots deduct a lower band first, which understates the employer cost by EUR 300 per head per year at the 2026 rate.

Worked example. 18 eligible staff on an average EUR 38,000 plus 3 staff paid over the EUR 80,000 cap is a pensionable base of EUR 924,000. At 1.5% that is EUR 13,860 a year and EUR 1,155 per monthly pay run, with a State top-up of EUR 4,620. Deduct EUR 20,000 from each salary first and you would budget EUR 7,560 — EUR 6,300 too little. The same payroll at the 6% end rate is EUR 55,440 a year.

What you get, free, with no key and no headcount limit — all 6 figures:

1. Employer cost at the phase rate you pick
2. Employer cost per pay run (monthly, fortnightly or weekly)
3. Under-budget if EUR 20,000 is treated as a lower band
4. State top-up on the same payroll
5. Same payroll at the 6% end rate
6. Still to find against what you already provisioned

4 phase rates built in: employer 1.5% for 2026–2028, 3% for 2029–2031, 4.5% for 2032–2034, 6% from 2035, with the State top-up moving 0.5%, 1%, 1.5% and 2% alongside.

Paid layer — $60 once. The free layer answers the question completely; the key is for keeping and repeating. It exports the costing as a dated CSV row for your budget file and sets a browser alert before the 1 January 2029 step to employer 3%. One licence key per person or team seat. 7-day full refund.

Privacy. Every calculation runs locally in your browser. No payroll figures leave the machine. The only outbound request is licence-key validation against api.polar.sh, and only if you enter a key.

Yardstick. An Irish payroll bureau charges roughly EUR 5 to EUR 12 per payslip, and a fully managed service EUR 15 to EUR 25 per employee per month; re-forecasting auto-enrolment across the phase steps is chargeable advisory time on top.

# Firefox AMO

Name (≤50): Ireland Auto-Enrolment Employer Cost 2026

Summary (≤250): Costs Ireland's auto-enrolment pension (My Future Fund) for your payroll: employer contribution a year and per pay run, the State top-up, and the EUR 6,300 a 21-staff employer under-budgets by treating EUR 20,000 as a lower band.

# Microsoft Edge Add-ons

Same package, same listing as the Chrome Web Store entry above.