Ireland minimum wage
Statutory national minimum hourly rate of pay for employees aged 20 and over, declared by ministerial order under the National Minimum Wage Act 2000 on the recommendation of the Low Pay Commission.
| Current value | 14.15 EUR/hour |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2026-01-01 |
| Official source | S.I. No. 472 of 2025 — National Minimum Wage Order 2025, article 2, made 8 October 2025 by the Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment under s. 10D(1)(a) (inserted by s. 8 of the National Minimum Wage (Low Pay Commission) Act 2015) and s. 3(1) of the National Minimum Wage Act 2000 (No. 5 of 2000); notice of making published in Iris Oifigiúil of 10 October 2025 |
| Last verified | 2026-07-22 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
IRELAND DOES HAVE A STATUTORY NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE — the lead is correct. Article 2 of S.I. No. 472 of 2025 declares, verbatim: the national minimum hourly rate of pay for the purposes of the National Minimum Wage Acts 2000 and 2015 shall be €14.15, in operation from 1 January 2026. The Order text was read directly from the Irish Statute Book on 2026-07-22 and cross-checked against the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment rate table. The Order was made on the Low Pay Commission recommendation received 15 July 2025. AGE-BASED SUB-MINIMUM RATES ARE NOT IN THE ORDER — the Order declares only the adult rate. The reduced rates come from s. 14(b) of the Act (70% for employees under 18) and from s. 15 (substituted by s. 18(b) of the Employment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2018, No. 38 of 2018) as prescribed by S.I. No. 72 of 2019, the National Minimum Wage (Prescription of percentages of hourly rates of pay) Order 2019: 70% under 18, 80% at age 18, 90% at age 19. Applied to €14.15 and as published by the Department: aged 20 and over €14.15, aged 19 €12.74, aged 18 €11.32, under 18 €9.91. Note the published 19-year-old and under-18 rates are ROUNDED UP to the cent from the arithmetic 90% (€12.735) and 70% (€9.905) — do not recompute and serve €12.73 or €9.90. Since 4 March 2019 the sub-minima are purely AGE-based; the pre-2019 'trainee' and 'first/second year of employment' sub-rates were abolished and any file still carrying them is describing law that no longer exists. WHAT COUNTS AS PAY: gross basic pay plus shift premium, bonus and service charges paid through payroll are reckonable. Board and lodgings may be counted only up to statutory ceilings, fixed by article 3 of the same Order at €1.27 per hour worked for board and €33.42 per week or €4.77 per day for lodgings. NOT reckonable: overtime, public-holiday/weekend/unsocial-hours premiums, on-call and special-duty allowances, tips and gratuities (including tips distributed from a central fund), expense reimbursements, benefit in kind, and payment in lieu of notice. STATUTORY EXCLUSIONS from the NMW entirely: employees who are close relatives of a sole-trader employer, and craft apprentices within the meaning of the Industrial Training Act 1967 or the Labour Services Act 1987. NATIONAL LIVING WAGE — THE TIMETABLE HAS SLIPPED AND THIS IS THE MOST LIKELY STALE FACT IN ANY IRISH WAGE RECORD: the 2022 policy commitment was to replace the NMW with a National Living Wage set at 60% of hourly median earnings BY 2026. That did not happen. Government has pushed the target out to 2029, and €14.15 is a National Minimum Wage figure, NOT a living wage figure. Any source stating that Ireland has a living wage in 2026, or quoting the old 2022 illustrative projection of about €13.70 for 2026, is wrong. Cadence is annual, revised with effect from 1 January following a Budget-day announcement. WATCH ITEM, NOT SERVED: in mid-July 2026 it was widely reported that the Low Pay Commission had recommended a 79c increase to €14.94 from 1 January 2027. That is a recommendation only — it has not been accepted by the Minister, has not been announced on Budget day, and no statutory instrument exists. It was NOT verified at a primary source in this pass and must not be served. ACCESS QUIRKS: irishstatutebook.ie and gov.ie both return HTTP 403 to plain automated fetchers — send a browser User-Agent. The Department's rate page lives at a URL slug ending 'national-minimum-wage-increase-on-1-january-2025' even though its content is the 2026 rate table; the slug is not a reliable indicator of the year covered.
Earlier values
| From | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-01-01 | 10.5 | S.I. No. 517 of 2021 — National Minimum Wage Order 2021, art |
| 2023-01-01 | 11.3 | S.I. No. 500 of 2022 — National Minimum Wage Order 2022, art |
| 2024-01-01 | 12.7 | S.I. No. 497 of 2023 — National Minimum Wage Order 2023, art |
| 2025-01-01 | 13.5 | S.I. No. 563 of 2024 — National Minimum Wage Order 2024, art |
Get it programmatically
curl https://euroref.dev/v1/ie/minimum-wage
# $0.001 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://euroref.dev/v1/ie/minimum-wage/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://euroref.dev/provenance/ie/minimum-wageOther Ireland series: policy interest rate · VAT rate · public holidays · inflation rate (CPI) · corporate tax rate · income tax rates · ECB main refinancing rate · late-payment interest rate