The Minister for Children, Disability and Equality has announced that a gender pay gap reporting portal will be launched later this year, in autumn 2025.
This is an important update for Irish businesses, with the Department estimating that approximately 6000 companies will be required to submit a gender pay gap report to the online portal this year.
The Minister also suggested that the reporting deadline will be in November this year.
What is gender pay gap reporting?
The Gender Pay Gap Information Act 2021 requires businesses to publish a report detailing the hourly gender pay gap in their business, across a range of specified metrics. The Act is part of a wider initiative to improve gender equality in Ireland and, more specifically, aims to bring about greater pay parity between men and women.
Initially, when the requirement was introduced in 2022, only companies with 250 employees or more were required to submit a gender pay gap report. This threshold has been increasing gradually each year and, in 2025, any company with 50 employees or more will be required to file a report.
The portal: what you need to know
Up until this point, companies have been required to post their gender pay gap reports either on their own website or somewhere else that is accessible to the public.
As well as submitting statistics and figures on gender-based pay information within the business, employers have also been required to publish an explanation for any gender pay gap that does arise from those findings.
With the introduction of the new portal, however, this system is about to change.
Once launched, employers will be required to upload their pay gap reports directly to the portal, and not just on their own website as was previously the case.
New reporting deadline
As well as announcing the upcoming launch of the portal, the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality also suggested that the reporting deadline this year (2025) will take place in November, and not in December as was the case in previous years.
Employers will be required to gather their gender pay gap data on a ‘snapshot’ date in June, and to publish those results in November. The exact reporting date will depend on the snapshot date selected by the employer. For example, if a business chooses 5 June as their snapshot date, they will be required to publish the results on the portal by 5 November.
What does this mean for my business?
If your business has 50 or more employees, and you are therefore required to submit a gender pay gap report in November, it is crucial that you are familiar with the publishing method that will be required. Once it is launched, you will be obligated to submit your report directly onto the online portal.
The nature of the portal may also make gender pay gap reports more easily accessible to the public than they were previously. Members of the public will be able to search all gender pay gap reports on just one single platform, making it easier to compare multiple reports at once and to draw conclusions and comparisons.
