Ireland: Mandatory gender pay gap reporting is now in effect

Employer Action Code: Act

The Gender Pay Gap Information Act 2021 and its recently released regulations are now in effect, introducing significant obligations for covered employers to calculate and publish detailed comparative pay information between female and male workers annually starting this year, and to analyze and address any identified pay gaps.

Key details

For further details and analysis, see our detailed article: Gender pay gap reporting has arrived in Ireland

• All companies, public and private, with 250 or more employees in Ireland (as of a selected “snapshot” date) are required to report annually, starting in 2022. The employee threshold will fall to 150 in 2024 and 50 in 2025. The requirement encompasses full-time and part-time employees as well as employees who are on leaves of under 12 months.
• The company must select a snapshot date in June, and by six months later publish — on its website or in another form easily accessible to its employees and the public — specified statistics based on the 12-month period preceding the snapshot date. The report must remain accessible for at least three years after publication.
• The specific statistics (calculated as prescribed by the regulations) must include:
• The difference in mean and median hourly pay between all female and male employees, as well as separate similar statistics relating to part-time and temporary employees
• The proportion of women and men in each pay quartile
• The difference in mean and median bonuses paid to female and male employees during the year
• The proportion of women and men receiving bonuses
• The proportion of women and men receiving benefits in kind
• The company must include a narrative based on the statistics, outlining the underlying drivers of any identified gaps and the steps that the company is taking or proposing to take to address and reduce the gaps over time.
• The government is expected to establish a mandatory online reporting system for the 2023 reporting cycle.

Employer implications

The effort and complexity that will be involved in planning, gathering and communicating the required information should not be underestimated, nor should the visibility on the published results and action steps by current and potential employees, the media, customers and investors. Affected employers are advised to begin work, if they haven’t already, on the technical data preparation as well as on understanding and addressing the underlying reasons for any gender pay gaps in their organizations.