Pay transparency in Ireland: a guide for small employers

Ireland has not yet transposed the EU Pay Transparency Directive, and at the time of writing there is no fixed date for when it will. The directive's core duties will apply to Irish employers of every size once national law is in place, so a small employer can use the waiting time to build a simple pay structure: score roles on four criteria, group them into grades and set a salary band per grade. This guide explains what is coming and walks through an example for a 30-person company.

Where Ireland stands

Member states had to transpose Directive (EU) 2023/970 by 7 June 2026. Ireland missed that deadline, and the national legislation is still in preparation. Check the current status on our Ireland page and the official source before changing your recruitment documents. For the wider picture, see the country status overview.

What the directive will require, regardless of size

• Pay before the interview. Candidates must be told the starting pay or pay range before the interview, in practice in the job ad.
• No salary-history questions. You may not ask candidates what they earn now or earned before.
• Objective, gender-neutral criteria. Pay and pay progression must rest on criteria such as skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions, and employees must be able to see them.
• Right to pay information. An employee can ask for their own pay level and the average pay levels, broken down by sex, for employees doing the same work or work of equal value. You reply within a reasonable period and at most two months, and you remind all staff of this right every year. Our reply template shows how.
• No pay secrecy. Contract clauses that stop employees from disclosing their own pay are not allowed.

How this relates to gender pay gap reporting

Ireland already has gender pay gap reporting under national law, currently for employers with 50 or more employees. The directive's own reporting duty is structured differently: annual reports for 250 or more workers, every three years for between 150 and 249, and every three years from 2031 for between 100 and 149. Under 100 there is no reporting duty under the directive. How Ireland will align its existing regime with the directive depends on the transposing legislation, so do not assume either set of thresholds will change until the law is published.

For a small employer, the practical point is this: reporting may or may not apply to you, but the transparency duties above will.

Example: a 30-person company

A software and services firm in Cork has 30 employees in seven roles. Here is how it builds a pay structure in an afternoon.

Step 1: score each role

Each role gets 1 to 5 points on skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions:

• Office administrator: 2, 2, 2, 1, total 7
• Customer support agent: 2, 3, 2, 2, total 9
• Field technician: 3, 3, 2, 4, total 12
• Accounts executive: 3, 3, 3, 1, total 10
• Software developer: 4, 3, 3, 1, total 11
• Team lead: 4, 3, 4, 2, total 13
• Operations manager: 5, 4, 5, 2, total 16

The field technician and the developer land close together: the technician's travel and on-site conditions balance the developer's higher technical skills. That is what work of equal value looks like in practice.

Step 2: group into grades

• Grade 1 (between 7 and 9 points): office administrator, customer support agent
• Grade 2 (between 10 and 12 points): accounts executive, software developer, field technician
• Grade 3 (13 points or more): team lead, operations manager

Step 3: set salary bands

Each grade gets a minimum, midpoint and maximum, gross per year. As good practice (not a legal requirement), ValuGrade uses a band width of about 30% in lower grades and 40% in higher grades:

• Grade 1: between €32,000 and €41,600, midpoint €36,800
• Grade 2: between €42,000 and €54,600, midpoint €48,300
• Grade 3: between €55,000 and €77,000, midpoint €66,000

Step 4: check everyone against the bands

Place each employee's current salary in their band. Anyone below the minimum gets a plan to move up. Anyone above the maximum keeps their salary, and you write down why. If two people in the same grade earn very different amounts, record the objective reason, such as documented experience, or plan to close the gap.

Step 5: use it in job ads

When the firm hires a customer support agent, the ad can say: "Salary between €32,000 and €37,000 gross per year, depending on experience." The free salary range generator writes this sentence for you, and How to write a salary range in an EU job ad has more examples. For the full method, read Salary bands for small companies.

What you can do now

• Remove salary-history questions from application forms and interview scripts.
• Decide on a pay range for every role you recruit for.
• Write a one-page policy describing your pay criteria.
• Review employment contracts for pay confidentiality clauses.
• Prepare a standard reply for pay information requests.

None of this depends on the final Irish text, and all of it makes the change easier when it comes.

The ValuGrade wizard does the scoring, grades and bands for you, and the paid report adds a job-ad pay sentence, a pay-criteria policy and a reply template for every role.

This article provides structure and templates, not legal advice.