The EU Pay Transparency Directive comes into force on June 7^th this summer, a looming deadline for Irish business owners.

The directive requires employers to give greater visibility on how pay is set and pay decisions are reached. Ireland has not yet fixed a domestic transposition date, but HR professionals say that that is no reason for business owners to wait.

Pay remains the main driver of job search decisions across Europe, yet despite this, salary information is still frequently absent from job postings, despite an EU-driven policy push to increase salary transparency, according to a recent report published by job-search platform Indeed.

Recent data from Indeed shows that just 39% of Irish job postings feature salary information as of March 2026, up just 3% from the same period last year.

Indeed’s research found that several major European markets are likely to miss targets set out by the upcoming EU Pay Transparency Directive deadline, which states that by summer 2026, employers must have created an environment in which the topic of pay is not restricted.

When it comes to the rate of inclusion of salary information on jobs postings, several large European economies, such as Germany (12%) and Spain (17%), were found to be lagging significantly, in comparison to the UK (56%), the Netherlands (48%) and France (43%).

Italy is the only country so far to have noted a sustained rise in recent months, jumping from 22% to 36%.

The findings suggest many employers have yet to fully engage with the practical implications of pay transparency, particularly in areas such as pay reporting, employee rights to information, and gender pay gap accountability.

Irish law has recognised equality of pay and the concept of equal pay for equal work since the 1970s. There was legislation in 1974 relating to equality of pay, and more generally legislation in 1977 relating to equality of treatment.

But what is new under this directive is that it’s going to provide employees and their representatives with a much more transparent means of finding out about how an employer structures pay within its organisation.

Commenting on the results of Indeed’s report, Lisa Feist, an economist at Indeed, said, “With most large EU member states yet to pass national legislation, many employers do not appear willing to change their job posting practices.

“Against this backdrop, the June 2026 EU deadline is less a hard trigger than a starting point for legislative processes that will play out across most member states over the coming months. Individual countries may go further than the directive and mandate upfront disclosure, but until they do so, the directive allows postings to omit pay.”

 

NB – This is a guide for information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. If you have an issue requiring legal advice, please contact any of the team at Nolan Farrell & Goff LLP, whose numbers can be found on our website www.nfg.ie, or email info@nfg.ie.