‘No timeline’ for employers on pay directive
Lawyers at Flynn O’Driscoll LLP say that Irish employers have been left in a position where no indicative timeline has been provided for the transposition of an EU directive on pay transparency into Irish law.
Despite what they describe as “much uncertainty”, they have urged employers to take steps to prepare for its full implementation.
The directive was due to be fully transferred into member states’ national laws by 7 June, but the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality Norma Foley recently confirmed that Ireland would miss this deadline.
Transition period
The minister said that work was continuing to develop the necessary legislation to transpose the remaining provisions of the directive as soon as possible.
She also confirmed that implementation would now proceed on a phased basis once the legislation had been passed and that employers would not be penalised for failing to comply with all aspects of the directive by June 2026.
“The result is that Irish employers face a transitional period in which some elements of the directive are already reflected in existing Irish law, some pre-employment transparency measures are expected to be introduced first, and the remaining obligations will follow through further legislation and guidance,” the Flynn O’Driscoll lawyers stated in a note on the firm’s website.
Early measures
They added that, based on the legislative materials published to date and public statements from the department, the most likely early measures were those dealing with pay transparency before employment.
These include:
- Providing salary or salary ranges upfront, in the job advertisement, or before interview (draft Irish proposals suggest a requirement for salary disclosure in the job advertisement),
- Prohibiting employers from asking about pay history, and
- Requiring gender-neutral job descriptions and job titles.
The Flynn O’Driscoll lawyers urged employers to prepare for such requirements by:
- Reviewing job advertisements and recruitment processes so that pay rates or ranges can be provided clearly and consistently at the required stage,
- Removing salary-history questions from application forms and interview processes,
- Training HR and hiring teams on the new recruitment-stage obligations, and
- Reviewing employment contracts and policies to identify and remove any pay secrecy clauses that may no longer be enforceable in the future.
The firm also urged firms to begin the “broader structural work” needed for potential later phases of implementation – including issues such as pay architecture, job evaluation, and documentation of objective pay criteria.
Its lawyers urged employers to:
- Establish categories of workers performing the same work or work of equal value and assess whether differences in pay across those categories can be objectively justified on gender-neutral grounds,
- Ensure salary, bonus and benefits are determined by clearly documented criteria,
- Draft transparent pay-progression frameworks based on objective skills, experience, and performance,
- Ensure data-management systems are capable of responding to employee requests for pay information, and
- For employers already within the gender-pay-gap reporting regime, prepare for the expected use of the State reporting portal for the 2026 reporting cycle and ensure internal data systems can support accurate reporting.