Book Your Free Pension Call Free Assessment 091 421 900
Home2025-04-24T18:55:34+01:00

Employers Obligations & Queries

Supporting over 3,000 Businesses Across Ireland.

Have our qualified Financial Advisors answer your company’s questions

Advisors assessment and compliance check of your company

The upcoming Pension Auto-Enrolment in Ireland, set to commence in 2025

Need advice
on your redundancy obligations?

“The team have exceeded my expectations. They have put a lot of my queries at ease.”

Gary

“Kenneth and the admin team were super helpful and addressed all my questions and concerns.”

Stephanie

“This is such an amazing company to deal with. Extremely fast, efficient and extremely prompt on returning calls, or emails”

Lisa

Partnering with Employers

Personal Financial Advice for Your Business
With over 100 years of combined experience, Q Financial’s qualified financial advisors offer expert guidance to businesses across Ireland. Our team specializes in assessing and advising companies, ensuring compliance with financial regulations.

Call our helpline today for a free, confidential consultation. We’ll assess your business situation and provide tailored advice on financial planning and regulations to help your company thrive

Experienced financial advisors at Q Financial helping Irish businesses

Q Financial Advisors from left to right; Declan Hardiman, Donal Kennedy, Iain Kilbane, Lorraine Connolly, Claire Mannion and Luke O’Brien

Strengthen Your Team’s Financial Security

In just 2 minutes, assess your current employee benefits and discover how to improve them. Our free consultation with a certified advisor will provide you with the tools to better support your workforce.

Our Values

At Q Financial we examine and thoroughly assess all of your financial, pension and regulatory needs.

Customer First

At Q Financial, we evaluate your needs for your unique business and we design the solution.

Understanding

You know your business best. We guide you through the structure and regulating journey to maintain compliance with all employer obligations.

Teamwork

We combine our unique skills, knowledge and experience in our day to day service here at Q Financial. We evaluate all of the regulatory guidelines and find you the most practical and economic solution – We do all the work so you don’t have to

Confidentiality

The confidentiality of your business relationship is of utmost importance to us. At Q Financial we are completely trustworthy and absolutely reliable. When we say we will get back to you – we mean it. All contact will be dealt with complete discretion.

Contact Us

Employers Pension Helpline & OMA Financial Services Ltd is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Reference number – C135240

FAQ’s

Frequently Asked Questions

Prices & Charges: We evaluate the policy & management charges from all regulated pension & PRSA providers in Ireland2024-06-12T01:34:16+01:00

For each €1 saved by an employee, €2.33 would be credited to their pension savings account comprising their €1 personal contribution, plus €1 from their employer, plus €0.33 from the State. 

So for every €3 an employee contributes, they will receive a further €4 into their pension pot.
The added incentives are aimed at encouraging workers to remain in the scheme by reducing their costs of saving for retirement. 

Detailed examples of projected earnings for different life and work situations can be found in the Department of Social Protection document, The Design Principles for Ireland’s Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System. 

Opting in/out option: All eligible employees will be automatically enrolled in the scheme. 

However, participation is optional and operates on an opt-out basis.
Employees who have been automatically enrolled can choose to opt out or suspend their participation after six months.
Those who opt out will be auto-enrolled after two years have elapsed and they can opt out again after another six months.
If an employee opts out, they’ll receive a refund of their (employee) contributions, but employer and state contributions will remain in their pot.
Members will be able to pause their contributions after 6 months of saving, suspending their contributions for a maximum of two years.
They won’t receive a refund on what they’ve saved so far and can restart their saving at any time before the auto-restart.
Choice of funds: Employees will have a choice of four retirement savings funds to choose from, depending on the level of risk they prefer.
Three of these funds will have differing risk/return profiles comprising a conservative fund, a moderate risk fund and a higher risk fund.
The fourth option – a ‘life-style/life-cycle’ investment profile – will be the default fund provided if the employee doesn’t express a preference.
Moving jobs: The scheme will be set up on a ‘pot follows the member’ basis, so an employee’s pension is not linked to their employment but follows them as they move jobs.
This means workers will not have to join a new scheme each time they change employer and those who have more than one employment will have their pension savings combined into one pot. 

Participants of the new scheme will be able to access their account via an online portal run by the CPA.
They’ll be able to view account balances, contributions and investment returns and update information or suspend their payments.
When will the auto-enrolment scheme begin?: Legislation and processes will be implemented from now, with the launch of the scheme and paid contributions to start from January 2025. Contributions will be gradually phased in over 10 years, with employee and employer payments beginning at a modest level of 1.5% and increasing every three years by 1.5% until they reach 6%.

How much will Auto-Enrolment cost?2024-07-29T22:06:27+01:00

Employer contributions will stand at 1.5% of gross pay.

  • In year 4 that will increase to 3%
  • In year 7 that will increase to 4.5%
  • In year 10 that will increase to the maximum rate of 6%

Contributions will be fixed and employers and employees won’t be able to contribute less or more than the set rate.

State Contributions under Auto-Enrolment: (Information extracted from Gov.ie Jan 2024)

Year 1 – 3 0.5%
Year 4 – 6 1%
Year 7 – 9 1.5%
Year 10+ 6%

However, benefits may not be extracted until employees reach full statutory retirement status (age 66+) It may be in both employer and employee’s interest to start a PRSA contribution which may lead to early retirement benefits.

Note: Once there is an employer PRSA with employer benefits being regularly extracted through the payroll system, both employer and employee are exempt from enforced auto-enrolment.

How will Auto-Enrolment work?2024-06-08T05:49:32+01:00

In the past it was up to employers to decide whether they wanted to have a pension scheme or not and it was up to the employee to decide whether they wanted to join their employer’s scheme.

Once enacted, people who do not have a pension scheme, earn more than €20,000 per annum and are aged between 23 and 60 will be automatically enrolled into the new mandatory system.

Do employers contribute to a PRSA?2024-06-12T01:23:53+01:00

Employers can contribute to a PRSA and since 2023 there is no limit on the employer’s contribution. However, there is no obligation on the employer to contribute, at present.

So is a PRSA mandatory in Ireland?2024-06-12T01:32:24+01:00

Employees who are not entitled to gain access to an employer’s Occupational Pension Scheme or Group scheme within 6 months of service must be given access to a PRSA by their employer.

As an employer, am I obliged to have a group pension?2024-07-29T22:08:54+01:00

There is no legal obligation for an employer to set-up or contribute to a pension at present. However,

  • The government of Ireland intend on introducing Auto-Enrolment in 2024.
    Find out more about Auto-Enrolment→
  • If an employee does not have a pension scheme, the employee will need to provide an employee with access to at least one standard Personal Retirement Savings Account i.e. a PRSA

However, when the current legislation which has passed all stages of Oireachtas is introduced in 2025, all employers and employees who are not contributing to an employer based regular payroll pension and PRSA scheme will be auto-enrolled at the minimum statutory levels required for their income and age.

Typically, an employer based PRSA which administers the payroll deduction process is the best and cheapest way for both employer and employees to make contributions and be exempt from auto-enrolment enforcement.