Quick Answer
My Future Fund is Ireland's automatic enrolment pension scheme. It has been live since 1 January 2026 and it is not optional.
If you employ anyone aged between 23 and 60 who earns over €20,000 a year and is not already paying into a pension through payroll, they are enrolled automatically. You must match their contribution.
In the first phase, running from 2026 to 2028, the employee pays 1.5% of gross earnings, the employer pays 1.5%, and the State adds a top-up of 0.5%. Contributions are calculated on earnings up to €80,000.
For agency and temporary staff, the recruitment agency is the employer for payroll purposes, so the agency handles enrolment and pays the employer contribution. If you hire temps, that cost sits inside your charge rate rather than on your own payroll.
Most Irish employers heard about auto-enrolment somewhere around 2024, filed it under "deal with it later", and then found it arriving in January payroll whether they were ready or not. The scheme had been deferred twice, first from January 2025 and then from September 2025, which did not help anyone take the deadline seriously.
It is here now. This guide covers what My Future Fund actually requires, what it costs, and the part almost nobody has written about clearly: how it works when your staff come through an agency.
What My Future Fund is
My Future Fund is the operating name for the Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System, established under the Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System Act 2024. It is administered by NAERSA, the National Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings Authority.
The purpose is straightforward. Before this scheme, roughly 800,000 employees in Ireland had no workplace pension at all and would rely entirely on the State Pension in retirement. Ireland was the only OECD country without an automatic enrolment system.
The design borrows from the UK model but differs in one significant respect. Instead of tax relief on employee contributions, the State pays a direct top-up into the pension pot. That distinction matters for how you explain the scheme to staff, and it is covered further down.
Who gets enrolled
An employee is automatically enrolled if they meet all of the following:
Aged between 23 and 60
Earning €20,000 or more per year across all employments
Not already contributing to a pension through payroll
That last point catches people out. A personal pension the employee funds from their own bank account does not exempt them. The contribution has to run through payroll and appear on the payslip.
Eligibility is assessed on a rolling basis rather than annually. NAERSA applies a rolling 13-week lookback on gross earnings, and an employee crossing roughly €5,000 in that window becomes eligible. This is the mechanism that catches staff whose hours vary, and it is the single most important detail for anyone running a seasonal or shift-based operation.
Earnings are assessed on gross pay, which includes overtime, shift premiums, bonuses and benefit in kind. Not basic salary alone.
What it costs
Contributions phase in over ten years.
Period | Employee | Employer | State top-up |
2026 to 2028 | 1.5% | 1.5% | 0.5% |
2029 to 2031 | 3% | 3% | 1% |
2032 to 2034 | 4.5% | 4.5% | 1.5% |
2035 onwards | 6% | 6% | 2% |
Employer and State contributions are capped at the first €80,000 of annual earnings. An employee earning above that can keep contributing on the excess, but you are not required to match it.
In practical terms, for every €3 an employee saves, the employer adds €3 and the State adds €1. A €3 contribution becomes €7 in the pot.
For a full time employee on €35,000, the 2026 employer cost is around €525 a year. Across a team of twenty eligible staff, that is roughly €10,500 in the first phase and materially more once rates step up in 2029. Worth building into your workforce budgeting alongside the other 2026 payroll changes, including the minimum wage increase to €14.15 per hour and the PRSI rise of 0.15% for employers and employees from 1 October 2026.
If you are reviewing overall staffing costs, our breakdown of what it costs to hire staff in Ireland sets auto-enrolment alongside the other line items.
What employers have to do
The scheme was deliberately built to keep the administrative burden light. You are not setting up or running an occupational pension scheme. You are passing payroll data to NAERSA and remitting contributions.
In practice:
Register with NAERSA through the employer portal.
Update your payroll software. Most Irish payroll providers released My Future Fund functionality in their 2026 versions. Check that yours is applying deductions correctly rather than assuming it is.
Identify eligible staff, including anyone whose earnings fluctuate across the 13-week window.
Deduct and remit contributions. Employee and employer contributions appear on the payslip. The State top-up does not, because NAERSA collects it separately.
Communicate with employees. They will receive notification from NAERSA, but staff will come to you with questions first.
Review employment contracts so they reflect the new pension provision.
The bit nobody explains: agency and temporary staff
This is where the questions actually land, and where most published guidance goes quiet.
Who is the employer?
For temporary agency workers, the recruitment agency is the employer for PAYE purposes. The agency runs payroll, handles PRSI and statutory obligations, and therefore carries the auto-enrolment responsibility for those workers.
You do not enrol temps you hire through an agency. Your agency does.
What this means commercially is that the employer contribution forms part of the agency's cost base and is reflected in the charge rate you are quoted. It has not disappeared. It has moved.
If you took on temporary staff before 2026 and your rates have shifted since, auto-enrolment is one of several reasons why, alongside the minimum wage increase and the October PRSI change.
Variable hours and the 13-week window
For salaried staff, eligibility is obvious. For temps, general operatives and hospitality workers on fluctuating hours, it is not.
Someone doing two shifts a week through a quiet January may fall below the threshold. The same person working a full week through a busy period crosses it. The rolling 13-week lookback means eligibility can switch on partway through the year, and it does not wait for the next tax year to do so.
This is one of the more common reasons a payroll system flags an unexpected deduction. It is also why manual tracking rarely works at scale.
Staff with more than one job
The €20,000 threshold applies to total earnings across all employments, not per job. Someone working two part time roles, each paying €12,000, is over the threshold even though neither employer alone would trigger it.
The Department of Social Protection has designed the scheme around this. Every participant has a single savings pot that follows them across all their employments, so an employee moving between assignments or holding two jobs is not left with a fragmented set of small pensions.
For anyone running a business that relies on part time or seasonal staff, this is worth understanding before an employee asks about it.
Temp to permanent transitions
When a temporary worker converts to a permanent contract with the hirer, the employer obligation transfers with them. The pot follows the employee, so nothing is lost, but the contributions now come off your payroll rather than the agency's.
If you are planning to bring an agency worker onto your own books, factor the employer contribution into the salary offer from the outset. It is a real cost and it should not come as a surprise at contract stage. The same applies to any direct permanent hire, where auto-enrolment now forms part of the total package alongside salary and benefits.
If you already run a pension scheme
Employees actively contributing to a qualifying pension through payroll are not auto-enrolled. But there is a change here that is easy to miss.
From 1 January 2026, a minimum total contribution of 3.5% of gross pay applies to occupational pension arrangements, with at least 1.5% funded by the employer. Any existing scheme sitting below those minimums needs to be brought up to standard.
If your current scheme is generous, nothing changes. If it was set up years ago at a token contribution level, it may no longer qualify, and your staff could end up auto-enrolled anyway. Worth a review with your pension adviser rather than an assumption.
Opting out
Employees cannot opt out immediately. The rules are specific:
Months 1 to 6: no opt-out permitted
Months 7 and 8: the employee may opt out and receive a refund of their own contributions
Employer contributions and the State top-up are not refunded to the employee
Anyone who opts out is automatically re-enrolled after two years and must opt out again
Setting up an alternative qualifying pension during the opt-out window exempts an employee from re-enrolment, but only while they are actively contributing to it.
Why the tax treatment confuses people
Expect this question from staff.
A standard pension contribution comes off gross pay before income tax, so a higher rate taxpayer contributing €100 feels roughly €60 out of pocket. My Future Fund does not work that way. Employee contributions are paid from taxed income, and the State top-up replaces the tax relief.
For most employees, particularly standard rate taxpayers, this is a good deal. The combination of an employer match and a State top-up is difficult to beat as a starting point. For higher rate taxpayers, the comparison against a PRSA is genuinely closer, and that is a conversation for a financial adviser rather than a payroll department.
Be careful here. Employers can explain how the scheme works. Advising an individual employee on whether to stay in or opt out is regulated financial advice, and it is not a line worth crossing.
Common mistakes
Assuming payroll software handles it automatically. Most providers released the functionality. Not every business updated to the current version, and not every configuration is correct. Check a live payslip.
Treating basic salary as the assessment figure. It is gross pay, including overtime and bonuses. Businesses with heavy overtime are the most likely to be caught out.
Only checking eligibility once. The rolling lookback means eligibility changes as hours change.
Forgetting employees with multiple jobs. The threshold is total earnings, not what you pay them.
Not updating contracts. Employment contracts should reflect the pension provision.
Where to get the official detail
This guide is written from an employer and recruitment perspective, not as legal or financial advice. For the definitive position, use the primary sources:
gov.ie My Future Fund contribution examples from the Department of Social Protection
NAERSA for employer registration and remittance
Citizens Information for the employee-facing explanation
For anything involving your existing pension scheme, take advice from a qualified pension adviser.
Key Takeaways
My Future Fund has been live since 1 January 2026 and enrolment is not optional.
Employees aged 23 to 60 earning over €20,000 and not already in a payroll pension are enrolled automatically.
Employers contribute 1.5% of gross earnings in 2026, rising to 6% by 2035. Capped at €80,000 of earnings.
Eligibility is based on gross pay, including overtime and bonuses, not basic salary.
A rolling 13-week lookback means staff on variable hours can become eligible partway through the year.
The €20,000 threshold applies across all of an employee's jobs, not per employer.
For agency and temporary staff, the agency is the employer and carries the contribution. It sits in your charge rate.
When a temp converts to permanent, the obligation moves to you. Build it into the salary offer.
Existing pension schemes must now meet a 3.5% minimum total contribution, with at least 1.5% from the employer.
Employees cannot opt out before month seven, and are re-enrolled automatically after two years.
Total Solutions is a recruitment agency based in Lucan, Co. Dublin, supporting employers across Ireland with temporary, permanent and contract staffing. We are the legal employer of our temporary workers and handle payroll, PRSI, auto-enrolment and statutory obligations on our clients' behalf.
If you are reviewing staffing costs or workforce structure for the year ahead, talk to our team or browse more employer guidance in our Insight Hub.
FAQs
Do I have to enrol temporary agency workers in My Future Fund?
No. The recruitment agency is the employer for payroll purposes and handles auto-enrolment for agency workers, including the employer contribution. That cost is reflected in the charge rate you are quoted rather than appearing on your own payroll.
How much does auto-enrolment cost an employer in 2026?
Employers contribute 1.5% of an eligible employee's gross earnings during the 2026 to 2028 phase, calculated on earnings up to €80,000. For an employee on €35,000, that is roughly €525 a year. Rates rise to 3% in 2029 and reach 6% by 2035.
Who is eligible for My Future Fund?
Employees aged 23 to 60 earning €20,000 or more per year across all employments who are not already contributing to a pension through payroll. Eligibility is assessed on gross pay using a rolling 13-week lookback, so staff on variable hours can become eligible partway through the year.
Can an employee opt out of My Future Fund?
Not in the first six months. In months seven and eight they may opt out and receive a refund of their own contributions, though not the employer contribution or the State top-up. Anyone who opts out is automatically re-enrolled after two years.
Does a personal pension exempt an employee from auto-enrolment?
Only if contributions are paid through payroll and appear on the payslip. A personal pension funded from the employee's own bank account does not prevent automatic enrolment.
What happens when a temp becomes a permanent employee?
The pension pot follows the employee, so nothing is lost. The employer contribution transfers from the agency to the hiring business, so it should be factored into the salary offer at contract stage.
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