Written answers

Tuesday, 4 November 2025

Department of An Taoiseach

Parental Leave

Photo of Emer CurrieEmer Currie (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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98. To ask the Taoiseach the statistics that are collected in relation maternity and paternity leave in Ireland including whether they are taken, the duration of leave taken, whether they availed of the statutory payment only or whether their employer topped up their maternity benefit; and if so, to what percentage of their salary. [59334/25]

Photo of Mary ButlerMary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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The publication “Employment Analysis of Maternity and Paternity Benefits” was first published in June 2020 with a follow up release in May 2023 as part of the CSO’s Frontier Series Outputs. CSO Frontier Series may use new methods which are under development and / or data sources which may be incomplete, for example new administrative data sources. Details on this release can be found on the CSO website.

The most recent publication covers the period 2019 to 2022 and relates to those who received a benefit payment from the Department of Social Protection in the reference year.

The tables below reference the relevant and available data from the release.

Table 1: Paternity Benefit Recipients and Rates, 2019-2022

Year Eligible* fathers that received Paternity Benefit %
2019 51.8
2020 49.8
*Eligibility is implied from Revenue employment data for statistical purposes only. See background notes on the release on the CSO website

Table 2: Statutory Maternity Pay and Employer top ups

Payment Type 2019 2020 2021
Statutory Payment Only 35.7 37.9 32.9
Received Employer Top Up 64.3 62.1 67.1
Table 3: Pay while receiving Maternity Benefit relative to previous pay
Pay during Maternity Leave 2019 2020 2021
No pay from employer 35.7 37.9 32.9
Between 1% and 50% of pre-maternity pay 16.1 14.3 14
Between 50% and 90% of pre-maternity pay 39.6 38.9 42.3
More than 90% of pre-maternity pay 8.6 8.9 10.7
This release is currently being updated, incorporating the latest data available. The exact release date will be added to the CSO release calendar prior to publication.

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