Complying with Ireland Gender Pay Gap Reporting
This article provides information on legally required pay equity reporting in Ireland. It gives an overview of which employers need to take action, what the deliverables are, how to get started, and how to use the PayAnalytics software to help meet the local requirements.
In Ireland, gender pay gap reporting is governed by the Gender Pay Gap Information Act 2021, which was signed into law on July 13, 2021. This legislation requires organizations to report and publish information about the gender pay gap within their workforce and, in certain circumstances, to explain the reasons for the gap and outline measures to address it.
As an employer, you must choose a data snapshot reference date within June of the reporting year, (the reports are based on the employees the company has on this date), with reporting due six months later, by December.
The Ireland reporting system mandates employers, as opposed to the UK where this is optional, to add supporting narrative and/or action plans.
In this article we will break down the Ireland Gender Pay Gap Reporting and help you to answer four questions:
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Please keep in mind that the articles in the PayAnalytics Help Center do not offer legal advice.
Who does it apply to?
The reporting requirements began in 2022, with phased implementation depending on the size of the organization.
2022: Employers with 250+ employees were required to report.
2024: Employers with 150+ employees will be required to report.
2025: Employers with 50+ employees will be required to report.
What is the requirement?
The process starts with the following (see Government guidelines for gathering the data):
Gathering gender, hourly pay, bonus pay and benefits in kind data for each employee,
Determining which employees are part-time workers or on temporary contracts.
In determining the number of employees in the organization, all employees are counted. In instances where an employee does not self-identify as either gender, an employer may omit the individual from the gender pay gap calculations.
The data to be reported:
The difference between the mean and median hourly pay of male and female employees,
The difference between the mean and median bonus pay of male and female employees,
The percentage of male and female employees who received bonuses and benefits-in-kind,
The proportions of male and female employees in each quartile pay band.
Include an explanation of results:
Employers must provide a written statement explaining the reasons for the gender pay gap and any actions being taken (or planned) to address it.
How does PayAnalytics help you to meet the requirement?
The PayAnalytics platform supports your team to import required employee and compensation data, explore initial insights into pay disparities and generate specific reports:
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Automated pay audits to identify any pay disparities (outliers) within your employee compensation across different demographic groups using specific pay equity focused analytics and insights.
Refer to our Getting Started article Reviewing your data to gain initial pay audit insights including outlier views and the raw (unadjusted) pay gaps.
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Built-in mandatory reporting enabling your HR teams to generate detailed reports on pay structures, gender pay gaps, and other key metrics required by the directive. PayAnalytics includes built-in templates including the Ireland report.
Refer to our Getting Started article Generating pay equity reports to discover our built-in report templates, which will be continuously updated based on changes to regulations.
Preparing your dataset
Note that a dataset containing at least the following data needs to be imported prior to generating the report:
Unique employee ID (mandatory for all datasets),
Gender which for reporting purposes constitutes either male or female, which are not further defined in regulations,
Hourly pay computed as salary (which is defined as including basic pay, bonus, allowances, shift pay, piecework, holiday pay and overtime (differs from UK gender pay gap), but excludes expense reimbursement, benefits in kind, redundancy, arrears and employer pension contributions) divided by the number of hours worked,
Bonus remuneration (if applicable), the pro-rated amount received by employees within the reference period, 0 if no bonus was received by an employee,
Benefits in kind, including two fields, one indicating whether an employee received a bonus in the reference period and another indicating the pro-rated amount (if applicable),
Temporary worker indicator (if applicable), a field indicating whether or not an employee has a temporary contract,
Part-time worker indicator (if applicable), a field indicating whether or not an employee works part-time or full-time. This field does not need to specify the level of part-time (e.g. 0.8FTE) as the hours worked are already accounted for in your hourly pay computation.
Generating the report
You can create your Ireland gender pay gap report with just a few clicks:
From your navigation head to Reports and select your relevant dataset (if not already automatically selected).
Click Create new report and find the Gender Pay Gap (Ireland) report under Government mandated reports.
When selecting the report, you will be prompted to configure which field in your dataset indicates hourly remuneration, which employees are part-time, on temporary contracts and receive bonus remuneration.
Click Generate report to view the required report sections and results.
This report is easily exported to both PDF and PowerPoint using the buttons on the right top corner.
Which steps should we take next?
The report does not need to be submitted to a central government portal. Instead the report:
must be published on the employer's website or in another publicly accessible location,
should remain accessible for at least three years.
An online reporting system is currently in development which will consist of a central portal where all employer reports will be uploaded and can be accessed publicly (source and other FAQs).
The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) are responsible for enforcing compliance. Non-compliance could result in investigations, audits, and potential legal consequences.
Conclusion and next steps
Understanding workforce diversity is key to understanding why a raw (unadjusted) pay gap might exist. You may want to check out ourWorkforce analytics report and how it helps to understand your organization’s changing workforce.
If you would like further support around Ireland Gender Pay Gap Reporting, please don't hesitate to reach out for assistance through the Help Center support channel or reach out to our pay equity consultants at clientservicespe@beqom.com.