Who gets enrolled
Enrolment is automatic and it is not your decision or the employee's. An employee is in scope where all of the following are true.
- Aged between 23 and 60.
- Earning more than €20,000 a year, assessed across all of their employments combined, not just yours.
- Not already contributing to a pension scheme through payroll.
The €20,000 test looks at total earnings across every job a person holds. Someone earning €12,000 from you and €12,000 elsewhere is in scope, and you will not necessarily know that from your own payroll.
Employees outside those criteria — under 23, over 60, or earning below €20,000 — can choose to opt in. Where they do, every rule applies as normal, including your matching contribution.
What it costs
| Years | Employee | Employer | State |
|---|---|---|---|
| Years 1 to 3 (from January 2026) | 1.5% | 1.5% | 0.5% |
| Rising in steps | → | → | → |
| By year 10 | 6% | 6% | 2% |
Employer and State contributions stop once an employee's salary reaches €80,000 in a year. The employee may continue contributing above that, but you are not obliged to match beyond it.
What you actually have to do
- Register on the My Future Fund employer portal using your ROS certificate. Registration runs to three steps: accept the terms, complete the company profile, and set up a payment method.
- Make sure your payroll software is on a version that supports auto-enrolment. Developers have been working to NAERSA's technical specification, but an out-of-date installation will not have it.
- Identify eligible employees. NAERSA determines eligibility from payroll data reported to Revenue, but you need to understand who is in scope and why.
- Tell employees when they are first enrolled. This is an obligation, not a courtesy.
- Deduct employee contributions and pay both those and your matching contribution to NAERSA through payroll each period.
- Keep contributing for the people who stay in, and handle opt-outs correctly when they arrive in months seven and eight.
How the money moves
Contributions are calculated on gross pay as reported to Revenue, and taken from the employee's net pay after deductions. You transfer the employee and employer amounts through your payroll provider to NAERSA. The State top-up is paid separately and does not pass through your payroll.
NAERSA — the National Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings Authority — handles enrolment, collection and investment. It does not charge employers for the administration; it is funded by a participant fee.
This is not tax relief the way a normal pension contribution is. Auto-enrolment uses a State top-up instead of relief at the employee's marginal rate, which is why it works differently for higher earners.
Opting out, and what you must not do
An enrolled employee must remain in the scheme for at least six months. They can then opt out during a two-month window, in months seven and eight. Outside that window they can suspend rather than exit.
Employees who opt out are re-enrolled automatically in due course if they still meet the criteria, so this is a recurring administrative event, not a one-off.
Should you set up a normal pension scheme instead?
This is the question worth asking rather than defaulting into auto-enrolment, and for many employers the answer is yes.
An occupational pension scheme or a PRSA takes employees out of auto-enrolment entirely. Contributions attract tax relief at the employee's marginal rate rather than a flat State top-up, which is materially better for anyone paying tax at 40%. Employer contributions are a deductible expense for the company. And you keep control of the provider, the fund choice and the contribution structure.
- A workforce concentrated at the higher rate of tax generally does better in a conventional scheme.
- A workforce mostly at the standard rate may be broadly indifferent.
- If you already offer a scheme but not to everyone, the employees outside it are the ones being auto-enrolled — so you now have two systems running in parallel.
What we are seeing go wrong in year one
- Employers assuming staff are exempt because they have a scheme, when that scheme does not actually cover everyone on the payroll.
- Payroll software that was never updated, so contributions are not being calculated at all.
- No one registered on the employer portal, so there is no payment method set up when the first liability falls due.
- Directors assuming auto-enrolment does not apply to them, which depends entirely on how they are paid and what pension arrangements already exist.
- Nothing said to employees, who then see a deduction on a payslip and ask questions nobody has prepared for.
Where this sits alongside your other payroll obligations
Auto-enrolment lands on top of an already real-time payroll system. Submissions still have to reach Revenue on or before each payday, the monthly PAYE, PRSI and USC liability is still due by the 14th, or the 23rd through ROS, and PRSI rates themselves rose again from 1 October 2026.
If payroll was already something that got done in a hurry on a Thursday, auto-enrolment is the point at which that stops being viable.