New figures from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions have revealed that the Government’s failure to transpose the EU Pay Transparency Directive on time will cost working women more than €570 million per year in lost wages.
The analysis, based on CSO earnings and employment data and international research on the effect of pay transparency on the gender pay gap, demonstrates that every year of delay has a real money cost for the 1.3 million women working in the Irish economy.
Adopted in June 2023 and required to be enacted in national law by 7 June 2026, the EU Pay Transparency Directive is intended to reduce the gender pay gap across the European Union by enforcing and building on the long-established right to equal pay for equal work or work of equal value between men and women.
Under the directive, employers in Ireland must start providing pay details to job applicants, and interviewers can no longer ask about pay history. Existing employees can request pay information to see how their pay compares to the average paid to colleagues doing comparable work and they can no longer be silenced by secrecy clauses from discussing their pay. In equal pay cases the burden of proof shifts from the employee to the employer.
EU member states were given three years to bring their national employment equality law up to standard. The EU Commission was recently informed that Ireland will not meet this weekend’s deadline. The necessary legislation to fully transpose the directive into Irish law has yet to be published and was not included on the Government’s priority list in its Summer Legislative Programme.
The Minister for Equality Norma Foley has reassured employers full pay transparency will only come into force “on a phased basis once the passage of the legislation is complete” and in the meantime they “will not be penalised” for non-compliance (26 May 2026, PQ 40218/26).
Commenting, Congress General Secretary Owen Reidy said:
More than 1,000 days since the EU Pay Transparency Directive was adopted, and the Government is no closer to delivering workers their right to pay transparency. Despite the long lead-in time, Minister Foley is yet to produce a first draft of her legislation.
“This delay comes at a hefty price of over half a billion euro per year from the wage packets of working women. Women have waited fifty years for equal pay laws to be backed up by more robust monitoring and enforcement mechanisms. Yet because of Government inaction they will have to wait years longer.
It is simply unacceptable that all we have had from Government to-date are words of comfort to employers that they have an indefinite free pass on unequal pay. We need a sea change on who Government is prioritising in transposing pay transparency into national law.”
ENDS
Note to editors
According to the latest available data, the average unadjusted gender pay gap in Ireland was 9.6% in 2022 (CSO four-yearly Structure of Earnings Survey).
This means that, without correcting for differences in individual and job characteristics of male and female employees, women’s gross hourly earnings were on average 9.6% less than those of men.
The €570 million figure is calculated as follows:
• Average hourly wage men: €27.73
• Average hourly wage women: €25.06
• Average difference: €2.67 per hour
International research shows pay transparency reduces the gender pay gap on average by 10–20%. Taking the lower bound (10%), the hourly reduction attributable to transparency is €0.267.
The CSO Labour Force Survey Q1 2026 records 1.3 million women in employment working an average of 31.9 hours per week (approximately 1,659 hours per year), yielding approximately 2.157 billion total hours worked.
Multiplying €0.267 × 2.157 billion hours = €575.8 million. Rounded conservatively: more than €570 million per year.
