Danny Mansergh
Head of Career Consulting, Mercer Ireland
01 April 2025
The Irish government periodically updates its published guidelines, regulations and FAQs for gender pay gap reporting. These can be found here.
There is a lot to digest in the material issued by government. If you need help with meeting your obligations on the Act, or developing a wider strategy on either pay equity or broader diversity, equity and inclusion – do please reach out to us.
Read on for a snap shot summary of the rules including which organisations are affected, who needs to take action, what needs to be done, who needs to do it and when they need to do it by.
From 2022 employers in Ireland with 250 or more employees need to report their gender
From 2024 the requirements will apply to employers with 150 or more employees
From 2025 it will apply to those with 50 or more employees
Affected organisations should assign responsibility for ensuring that the requirements are met: really, this is the first thing that needs to be done. It may or may not be practical or desirable to attempt the calculations in-house, and external support may be required. A lot here will depend on factors like:
Mercer is available to help organisations with every stage of the process, whether on the narrow reporting requirements, on a deeper analysis that also looks at pay equity within roles or on the framing of a diversity, equity and inclusion strategy that covers the gender pay gap amongst other DEI issues. Contact us to find out more.
Organisations will need to publish, in the manner and using the methodology specified by the government.
Where an organisation has to report, at a minimum the following actions need to be taken:
It may be desirable to go further. Calculating the gender pay gap is one thing; obtaining data that explains why that gap arises is another. In order to understand what factors give rise to the gender pay gap in a given organisation, the employer may wish to run analysis on pay equity – i.e. understanding what gaps may exist for particular roles and levels. This is not required by the Act – but it will help an organisation to understand whether the gap is a feature of different gender representation for different roles and levels, or whether in fact evidence of a gender pay gap also appears within particular jobs.
Practically speaking, though the Act contains provisions for legal action in the event of failure to report, the real penalty for such failure, or for reporting big gender pay gaps, will be reputational. Customers, shareholders and, most importantly, employees and potential employees will be watching.
Head of Career Consulting, Mercer Ireland
What will mandatory gender pay gap reporting mean for your organisation and how can you begin to prepare?
Find out more about GPG reporting requirements now and catch our webinar with some expert advice.