The entitlement as it stands
| Days per calendar year | 5 |
| Rate | 70% of normal daily earnings |
| Daily cap | €110 |
| Service requirement | 13 weeks' continuous service |
| Evidence | Medical certificate from a registered practitioner |
Statutory sick leave was introduced in 2023 at three days, and rose to five days from 1 January 2024. The legislation envisaged further increases to seven and then ten days, but the entitlement was held at five, and it remains five for 2026.
Five days is the floor, not the ceiling. If your contracts or your custom already provide more generous sick pay, that continues to apply. The statutory scheme does not reduce anything you already offer.
How to calculate the payment
The rate is 70% of the employee's normal daily earnings, subject to the €110 daily maximum. The cap bites at a normal daily rate of about €157, so anyone earning more than roughly €41,000 a year is capped.
- Work out the employee's normal daily earnings for the day in question.
- Take 70% of that figure.
- If the result exceeds €110, pay €110.
- Process it through payroll as pay, subject to PAYE, PRSI and USC in the normal way.
Statutory sick leave days do not have to be consecutive, and the five days run across the calendar year rather than a rolling twelve months.
Records you are legally required to keep
This is the obligation employers most often miss, and it carries its own penalty independent of whether you paid correctly.
You must keep records for every employee who takes statutory sick leave, retained for four years, showing the employee's details, their dates of employment, the days of statutory sick leave taken and the rate paid.
What happens after day five
Once statutory sick leave is exhausted, an employee may be able to claim Illness Benefit from the Department of Social Protection, subject to their PRSI record. Illness Benefit is not paid for the first three days of illness, and statutory sick pay is designed to cover that waiting period and beyond.
You are not obliged to top up beyond the statutory five days unless your contract of employment says so. Many employers do, either as a contractual sick pay scheme or discretionarily, and where you do the terms should be written down rather than decided case by case.
Where employers get caught
- Treating the five days as a rolling entitlement rather than resetting on 1 January.
- Paying full pay for the five days and assuming that discharges the obligation without recording it as statutory sick leave.
- Applying the 13-week service condition to the wrong start date, particularly after a transfer of undertakings.
- Not asking for a medical certificate, then having no evidence the leave qualified.
- Keeping no records at all, which is a separate offence from underpaying.
- Assuming part-time staff are excluded. They are not — the entitlement applies pro rata to their normal working pattern.
How this fits your wider employer obligations
Sick pay is one of several employer duties that have arrived or changed in recent years. Auto-enrolment started on 1 January 2026, the minimum wage rose to €14.15 an hour on the same date, and PRSI rates increased again from 1 October 2026.
Each is manageable alone. Together they are the reason employers who were running payroll themselves tend to stop.