The EU Pay Transparency Directive will put salary ranges in front of job applicants and end questions about what a candidate earned before. Ireland missed the EU deadline of 7 June 2026, and as of early September 2026 none of it was law here. For anyone asking where pay transparency in Ireland stands, the answer is that it is proposed but not yet in force, so prepare now and check the current status before relying on any date.
What the EU Pay Transparency Directive requires
EU member states were due to write the Directive into national law by 7 June 2026, according to the law firm Littler. Two parts affect hiring directly: applicants must be told the pay level or range for a role, and employers may not ask applicants about their current or past pay. The Directive also brings pay gap reporting. Littler notes that reporting begins on 7 June 2027 for employers with 150 or more workers, and that an unexplained gap above 5% in a category of workers can trigger a joint pay assessment.
Where Irish law stands
Here is what the published sources establish, in date order.
- January 2025: the General Scheme of the Equality (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024 was published. It covers only two elements of the Directive: salary levels or ranges in job advertisements, and a ban on asking applicants about current or past pay (Littler).
- 6 March 2026: Littler reported that the General Scheme had sat in pre-legislative scrutiny for 13 months, and that the Department had said implementation would be phased and employers 'will not be penalised for not having all elements of Directive completed in June 2026'.
- 12 March 2026: A&L Goodbody reported that the Equality Bill was listed for priority drafting in Autumn 2025 but omitted from the Spring 2026 legislation programme, and that a separate Pay Transparency Bill was 'in preparation' with no General Scheme published.
- 4 September 2026: William Fry reported that Ireland did not transpose the Directive by 7 June 2026, that the Pay Transparency Bill had not yet been drafted, and that no provision of the Directive was in force in Irish law.
So at the time of writing there is no legal duty in Ireland to show a pay range in a job advert and no ban on asking about pay history. Both are proposed. Check gov.ie or ask an employment law adviser before you act on a date.
Salary ranges in job adverts in Ireland
Mason Hayes & Curran, writing on 22 May 2025, pointed out that the Irish draft goes beyond the Directive by requiring the salary level or range in the advertisement itself. If it is enacted in that form, every advert would need a figure or a range, and a phrase such as 'competitive salary' would not supply one.
That applies to adverts placed through an agency as much as to your own careers page, because the range comes from you. Current staff will see it too, so the range has to stand up inside the business as well as outside it.
In an IrishJobs survey from the final quarter of 2019 (1,550 respondents), salary not being disclosed was the top frustration candidates named, at 27%. The survey is old, but the complaint is the one the draft law addresses.
Salary history questions
The draft would ban asking applicants about their current or past pay. That question turns up in more places than the interview: application forms, screening calls, interview guides and the brief you give a recruiter.
The practical replacement is to set the range first, then ask what the candidate expects for this role. An offer built on the range and the person's skills is easier to explain than one built on what a previous employer paid.
How employers can prepare now
None of this needs a commencement date to be worth doing. FH recommends five steps.
- Set a range for every role before it is advertised. Record how you arrived at it: the grade, market data and what people already in the role earn.
- Check each range against current pay. If the advertised range sits above what existing staff in the same job earn, decide how you will handle that before the advert goes live.
- Remove pay history questions from application forms, interview guides and agency briefs, and tell hiring managers why.
- Use your gender pay gap data to find gaps a published range would expose. Lewis Silkin notes that Irish gender pay gap reporting applies to employers with 50 or more employees under regulations effective from 31 May 2025, with a snapshot date in June and a report due within five months, by the end of November, published through a central online portal.
- Budget for the change. In CIPD Ireland's HR Practices in Ireland 2026 report (published May 2026, 330 responses), 63% of organisations highlighted rising employment costs from auto enrolment, statutory sick pay and pay transparency.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or immigration advice, so confirm the details with the relevant authority or an adviser.
Sources
Named sources and the dates they refer to.
- Littler, on Ireland and the Pay Transparency Directive, position as of 6 March 2026
- A&L Goodbody, on implementation of the Directive in Ireland, position as of 12 March 2026
- Mason Hayes & Curran, on transposing the Pay Transparency Directive, 22 May 2025
- Lewis Silkin, on gender pay gap reporting in Ireland, 19 June 2025
- William Fry, Ireland postpones pay transparency, 4 September 2026
- CIPD Ireland, HR Practices in Ireland 2026, published May 2026, 330 responses
- IrishJobs candidate survey, final quarter of 2019, 1,550 respondents
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