Sick Pay in Ireland 2026: Statutory Sick Pay Stays at 5 Days

If you are looking up sick pay in Ireland, one point matters more than any other in 2026: the entitlement is still 5 paid days per calendar year. The widely reported increases to 7 days in 2025 and 10 days in 2026 never happened. The Government decided in April 2025 not to proceed with them.

Statutory sick pay (SSP) is paid by your employer at 70% of your normal daily pay, capped at €110 a day. This guide covers who qualifies, the medical certification rules, what happens when your 5 days run out, and how to enforce the right if your employer refuses to pay.

Information last verified on 20 July 2026. This page is general legal information for the Republic of Ireland, not legal advice.

How many sick days do you get in Ireland in 2026?

You are entitled to 5 statutory sick leave days per calendar year in 2026, paid by your employer. The right comes from the Sick Leave Act 2022 and its commencement and daily-rate regulations.

The days can be taken consecutively or spread out through the year. The sick pay year is the calendar year, and unused days do not carry forward into the next year.

A single sick spell also cannot roll statutory sick pay across the year boundary. If you are still unfit for work, the route from there is Illness Benefit rather than extra employer-paid days.

Is sick pay increasing to 7 or 10 days? No, and here is why

The Government's original roadmap for the Sick Leave Act 2022 was a phased rollout: 3 days in 2023, 5 days in 2024, then 7 days and eventually 10. That ladder was an announced policy plan rather than a schedule written into the Act, which simply lets the Minister prescribe the number of days by order. Plenty of older articles still describe that schedule as if it were happening, which is why so many people believe 2026 brings 10 days.

It does not. On 8 April 2025, the Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, Peter Burke, confirmed that the entitlement will remain at five days per calendar year. The stated reason was the cumulative regulatory cost pressure on employers, particularly in retail and hospitality.

This is not framed as a pause with a scheduled resumption. The increases were simply not proceeded with, and no new commencement date has been set. Department of Social Protection guidance updated on 14 January 2026 still states 5 days for 2026.

How much is statutory sick pay per day?

Statutory sick pay is 70% of your normal daily pay, up to a maximum of €110 a day. If 70% of your normal daily pay is more than €110, you receive the €110 cap.

If your pay varies from week to week, your daily rate is your average daily pay over the 13 weeks before the sick leave. Regular bonuses and allowances count toward that average; overtime and commission do not.

Who qualifies for statutory sick pay?

You qualify once you have 13 weeks of continuous service with your employer. Every day you claim must be covered by a medical certificate, starting from day one of the illness.

The scheme deliberately covers the workforce broadly, including:

• Employees on probation, interns and apprentices.
• Agency workers and part-time workers.
• Workers over the State pension age who stay in employment.
• People with more than one job, who build up the entitlement in each job separately.

A gap in service of up to 26 weeks, where you take leave and return to the same employer, does not break the 13-week continuity requirement.

What are the medical certificate rules?

Statutory sick pay is only payable for medically certified days, and certification must run from day one of the illness. In practice that means seeing your GP on the first day you are out, not on day three.

The upside of the Irish scheme is that there are no waiting days. Once the day is certified, sick pay applies from the very first day of illness, unlike Illness Benefit which has waiting days built in.

What happens after your 5 sick days are used?

Once statutory sick pay is exhausted, the social welfare system takes over. Illness Benefit is a payment from the Department of Social Protection based on your PRSI contributions, and it interacts with SSP as follows:

• If your first illness of the year runs past 5 days, Illness Benefit can start from day 6, immediately after your SSP days end.
• If you have already used your 5 SSP days earlier in the year, Illness Benefit starts on day 4 of a new illness, after the normal 3 waiting days.
• Partial use works the same way. In the official example, a worker who had used 3 SSP days earlier in the year gets 2 SSP days, then 1 waiting day, with benefit from day 4.

Illness Benefit is a separate application to the DSP; your employer does not pay it.

Can your employer use its own sick pay scheme instead?

Yes, but only if the employer scheme is as favourable overall as the statutory scheme. Where a qualifying company scheme exists, it replaces SSP; you cannot stack the 5 statutory days on top of a company scheme.

An employer in severe financial difficulty can also apply to the Labour Court for an exemption from the statutory scheme lasting between 3 months and 12 months.

What if your employer refuses to pay sick pay?

Refusing statutory sick pay to a qualifying employee is an enforceable breach. You can refer a complaint to the Workplace Relations Commission through its online complaint form within 6 months, extendable to 12 months for reasonable cause. Our guide to making a WRC complaint covers the process step by step.

Penalising an employee for taking or proposing to take statutory sick leave is prohibited. If penalisation goes as far as dismissal, see our guide to unfair dismissal in Ireland.

Statutory sick pay sits alongside your other baseline rights, like the national minimum wage and paid maternity, paternity and parent's leave. All our Republic of Ireland guides are collected on the Ireland law hub.

This page is general information about statutory sick pay in the Republic of Ireland, not legal advice. Individual cases depend on service history, certification and how any company scheme compares with the statutory one, so consider advice from a solicitor and use the Workplace Relations Commission process for disputes.