Auto-Enrolment Pensions in Ireland: An Employer's Guide to My Future Fund

Ireland has historically been unusual among developed economies in having no state-mandated workplace pension auto-enrolment scheme, leaving hundreds of thousands of workers without any supplementary pension provision. That changed in January 2026, when My Future Fund, Ireland's new automatic enrolment retirement savings scheme, went live. For employers, this is not an optional add-on to existing benefits — it is a new statutory payroll obligation that applies automatically to eligible staff unless they are already covered by a qualifying scheme.

This guide sets out who is auto-enrolled, how contributions work, and what employers need to have in place now that the scheme is operating.

Who is automatically enrolled

My Future Fund automatically enrols employees who are aged between 23 and 60, earning at least €20,000 a year across all employments, and who are not already an active member of a qualifying occupational or personal pension scheme through their employer. Employers do not need to assess eligibility manually in the way some other auto-enrolment systems require — enrolment is administered centrally, with the National Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings Authority (NAERSA) identifying eligible workers using Revenue payroll data and notifying both the employee and the employer.

Employees who fall outside the automatic eligibility criteria — for example because they earn below €20,000, or are outside the 23-60 age band — are not automatically enrolled, though the scheme design allows for the eligibility window to be reviewed over time as the scheme beds in.

How contributions work

Contributions are set on a phased, rising scale over the scheme's early years, with a minimum combined contribution rate of 3.5% of gross earnings in the initial phase, of which the employer must contribute at least 1.5%, matched by an equivalent employee contribution, with the State also adding a top-up contribution rather than the traditional tax-relief-at-source model used by other Irish pension products. This State top-up is a distinctive feature of My Future Fund compared with existing personal retirement savings accounts (PRSAs) and occupational schemes, and is designed to make participation more immediately visible and rewarding for lower earners who may not benefit as much from marginal-rate tax relief.

Contribution rates are scheduled to increase in steps over the following years as the scheme matures, so employers should treat the initial 1.5% employer minimum as a starting point for payroll budgeting rather than a fixed long-term figure, and build the scheduled increases into medium-term workforce cost planning.

Employer obligations in practice

• Payroll integration. Payroll software needs to be able to identify auto-enrolled employees, deduct the correct employee contribution, add the employer contribution, and remit both to the scheme through the designated collection process — most modern Irish payroll packages have been updated to support this, but employers using older or bespoke systems should confirm compliance directly with their provider.
• Existing pension scheme review. Employers who already offer an occupational pension scheme should confirm which employees are active members of a "qualifying" scheme for auto-enrolment purposes, since only genuinely active participation exempts an employee from automatic enrolment — a scheme an employee is eligible for but has not joined does not exempt them.
• Employee communication. While NAERSA handles the formal enrolment notification, employers should be prepared to answer basic questions from staff about what auto-enrolment means for their take-home pay and how it interacts with any existing pension arrangements.
• Opt-out administration. Employees can opt out after a minimum initial participation period, and employers need a clear process for handling opt-out requests and any subsequent re-enrolment that the scheme design requires periodically.

These payroll changes sit alongside other 2026 Irish employment compliance developments, including the retirement-age reforms covered in our guide to Ireland's Contractual Retirement Ages Act, both of which affect how employers plan for an ageing and increasingly pension-engaged workforce.

Employees with more than one job

Because the €20,000 earnings threshold is assessed across all of an employee's employments rather than on a per-employer basis, a worker who does not individually meet the threshold with any single employer can still become eligible for auto-enrolment once their combined earnings across multiple jobs are taken into account. This creates a genuine administrative complication for employers, since an individual payroll department has no automatic visibility of what an employee earns elsewhere, and enrolment decisions in these cases rest with NAERSA's central assessment of aggregated Revenue payroll data rather than with any one employer's own payroll system.

In practice, this means an employer with a part-time or low-hours workforce should not assume that employees earning below €20,000 in that particular role are automatically excluded from the scheme, since a second job elsewhere could bring the employee within scope. Employers should be prepared for enrolment notifications to arrive for employees whose pay from that employer alone would not have triggered eligibility, and should have a payroll process ready to action the notification promptly rather than querying it as an apparent error.

Frequently asked questions

When did My Future Fund launch?

The scheme became operational in January 2026, marking Ireland's first state-run automatic enrolment retirement savings system.

Can an employee opt out immediately?

No — the scheme design requires a minimum initial participation period before an opt-out request can be made, after which the employee can choose to leave, subject to periodic re-enrolment provisions built into the scheme.

Does an employer need to contribute if the employee is already in a company pension scheme?

Employees who are active members of a qualifying occupational or personal pension scheme through their employer are not automatically enrolled into My Future Fund, so no separate employer contribution under the auto-enrolment scheme is required for those staff.

My Future Fund represents a fundamental shift in Irish workplace pension provision, and employers who haven't already confirmed their payroll system's readiness should treat this as an active compliance priority rather than a background system change. Learnsignal's CPD courses cover this and the wider set of 2026 Irish employment and payroll changes.