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Introduction

 

From 1 January 2026, Ireland will introduce a compulsory auto-enrolment pension scheme, to ensure all eligible employees begin saving for retirement.

Under the new system, employees aged 23 to 60 earning €20,000 or more annually, who are not already in a workplace pension, will be automatically enrolled in the scheme. Participation is mandatory at first, though employees may opt out after six months. If they do, they will be re-enrolled every two years unless they join another qualifying pension scheme.

The scheme is administered by the newly established National Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings Authority (NAERSA). Contributions are made by the employee, employer, and the State. Initially, employees contribute 1.5% of gross earnings, matched by employers and topped up by the State at 0.5%. These rates will gradually increase over ten years to 6% employee, 6% employer, and 2% State.

Employers will be legally required to facilitate enrolment and payroll deductions. Non-compliance may result in penalties. 

Glossary of terms used in this guidance

Auto Enrolment: A new national retirement savings scheme for employees without a private or occupational pension.

MyFuture Fund: The official name of the pension fund under the Auto Enrolment scheme.

NAERSA: National Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings Authority. The new public body responsible for administering the Auto Enrolment scheme.

AEPN: Automatic Enrolment Payroll Notification. (Like an RPN)

TCS: Tata Consultancy Services. Contracted by Department of Social Protection to develop, manage and operate the scheme

Timeline

 

  • 1 December 2025 – The NAERSA Employer Portal will go live. Employers will be able to register from this date.

  • 8 December 2025 – During the second week of December, AEPNs (Automatic Enrolment Payroll Notifications) will become available. We will release the Auto-Enrolment-enabled version of Payback once testing on the live system is complete.

  • 1 January 2026 – Employers can begin making Auto-Enrolment submissions for 2026 payments.

  • 1 January 2026 – The NAERSA Employee Portal will go live, providing employees with direct access to their Auto-Enrolment information.

 

 

Register with NAERSA

The first step is to Register with NAERSA. This should be done via the NAERSA portal:

MyFutureFund

You will not be able to download AEPNs, make submission or make payments until you register.

Like ROS, the NAERSA portal may require that you first load your Revenue Digital Certificate into your browser before you can log in.

The employer portal is due to go live on 1 Dec 2025

Changes to Payback

When the Auto Enrolment version of Payback is released, very shortly after the AEPNs have been made available, there will be additional menu items.

On the menu at the left are three new items:

  • Retrieve AEPNs - The Auto Enrolment equivalent to Revenue RPNs
  • Submit AE - Like the Revenue PSR submissions screen, but submitting to NAERSA
  • Letters - For emailing employees to let them know they've been Auto-Enrolled

Digital Certificate

NAERSA uses exactly the same authentication as ROS.ie. This means that your Revenue Digital certificate is also used to connect to the NAERSA server.

This also applies to Bureau users who use TAIN digital certificates.

There is a new column in the digital certificate check facility for Auto-enrolment, 'AE'.

 

NOTE: You do not have to do anything here. Your existing digital certificate should work with NAERSA

Retrieve AEPNs

AEPNs will be made available in the second week of December.

These are notifications to tell payroll operators which employees should be auto-enrolled and at what contribution rate.

They work in a very similar way to existing Revenue RPNs (tax details)

Payback has a new 'Retrieve AEPNs' screen. Use this to retrieve the AEPNs from NAERSA for all of your employees and set MyFutureFund pension contributions up for them.

Successful Retrieval

Select the company from the Drop Down at the top of the screen and click the Retrieve button.

Note that there is no 'Year' drop down in this screen. NAERSA does not require that a year be selected for AEPNs. AEPNs work across tax years.

Like RPNs, AEPNs are matched to employees on

  • Employee PPS Number
  • Employment ID

Inspect AEPNs Prior to Import

All employees that have an AEPN will be listed. When you click the Import button one of two things can happen:

For AEPNs with a Employer and Employee contribution percent greater than zero - A new MyFutureFund deduction is set up.

or

For AEPNs with an employer and employee contribution equal to zero - the MyFutureFund deduction is removed

Clicking the Import button will set up all the pensions.

NOTE that this can not be easily undone. To undo this, you would have to manually delete all the new MyFutureFund deductions from the Employee screen for each enrolled employee

It is not possible to add or remove employees from this list. If you believe there are errors, you need to contact NAERSA directly to get this reviewed.

Successfully Imported

After clicking the Import, this means that all employees listed have been enrolled and now have a new deduction set up.

You can see this deduction in the Employee screen Deductions tab. It is called 'MyFutureFund'

The deduction comes off of Net pay. It is a taxable deduction because the State is topping it up.

Inform Employees

When you have imported and applied the AEPNs, Payback will know which employees have been auto-enrolled. It is now possible to email all of the enrolled employees to inform them.

Payback has a Letters screen that will send a PDF of the letter template supplied by NAERSA. It works in a very similar way to the email payslips screen.

It is also possible to download these letters from the NAERSA portal. However, using the NAERSA portal method would probably mean having to print out and post the letters.

 

Employers are required to inform the employees that they have been enrolled.

Process Pay as Usual

When the MyFutureFund pensions have been set up, you can process the pay in the usual way in the Payroll screen.

The payslips for enrolled employees will have a new deduction. The employer contribution is shown at the bottom the Deductions column.

Note that the employee contribution is taken from Net Pay.

AutoEnrolment Submission Screen

Pension contribution details have to be submitted separately to Payroll Submissions. When processing payroll, there will now be two separate uploads:

  • One to Revenue for payroll (as currently done),
  • One to NAERSA for MFF (MyFutureFund) contributions.

The Auto Enrolment Submission screen behaves in a very similar way to the existing Revenue Submission screen. The main difference is for late submissions.

Click the Submit button to send the MFF contribution information to NAERSA

It will take a while for the contributions to appear in the NAERSA portal

Errors and Warnings

If there were any errors or warnings with the submission, these appear in the Errors tab.

Like the Revenue Submissions, the Payback Amounts should equal the Submitted to NAERSA amounts in the Details tab to indicate successful submission.

Manual upload via the NAERSA portal

Payback also allows the user to directly check the XML that is being sent to NAERSA.

This is displayed in the XML tab.

This can also be cut and pasted into a text file for manual upload via the NAERSA portal.

 

Note that this facility is not normally used, unless NAERSA requests it.

Submission Log

All submissions made to NAERA via Payback are logged. These can be checked via the Log tab.

Corrections, deletions and late submissions

We have had to separate the NAERSA and Revenue Submissions. This is mainly due to the way NAERSA handles corrections, deletions and late submissions.

For Revenue, if a submission is late, ie, submitted after the pay date, then there is no problem doing this in the Revenue Payroll Submission Screen. However For NAERSA, the following applies:

NAERSA Submission Rules (Example: Pay Date = 25th of the Month)

Before 18:30 on the pay date (before 6:30pm on the 25th):

You can:

  • Upload the contribution file
  • Delete the file
  • Correct the file (replace or amend records)

After 18:30 on the pay date (after 6:30pm on the 25th):

You can:

  • Still upload a contribution file
    (This will count as a late submission and may be reviewed for compliance)

You cannot:

  • Delete the file
  • Correct or amend the file
In Summary

Up to 6:30pm on the 25th - Upload, delete, correct

After 6:30pm on the 25th  - Upload only (no delete, no corrections)

Late Submission

If you are making a late submission, (after 6:30pm on the pay date) a warning will appear on the submission screen.

If you've already made a submission for this pay date, and want to replace or delete it, you will not be able to. You need to Contact NAERSA to do this.

 

You can only make one submission once it has gone past 6:30pm on the pay date, and only if you have not already submitted something

Pay Date Closing

If you are making a submission on the same day as the Pay date, and it is before 6:30pm, then a clock will appear on the screen.

This shows how log you have left to make corrections and deletions.

After 6:30pm, the date becomes closed and the 'Late Submission' rules apply

Pay Date Closed

If you have previously made a submission for a pay date, and it is now past 6:30pm of the pay date, then the pay date is closed for corrections and deletions.

If the previous submission was incorrect, then you need to contact NAERSA to get it amended.

Refresh the Calendar

The Auto Enrolment Submission screen has a facility that allows you to refresh the envelopes next to the pay dates in the calendar.

Click the Refresh Envelopes button at the top of the screen to do this.

For each pay date in the year, the NAERSA details are checked against those in Payback and the calendar is updated accordingly. The symbols should update automatically once submissions are made. However, the NAESRA server may on occasion be late coming back with a response

NOTE: this can take some time to run, so only use it if completely necessary

Auto-Enrolment – Frequently Asked Questions

1. Can I manually set up MyFutureFund pensions without using AEPNs?

No. Contributions are fully linked to AEPNs issued by NAERSA.
Submissions without valid AEPNs will fail.

2. Can I ‘opt out’ employees myself?

No. All opt-outs must be made directly by the employee through the NAERSA Employee Portal.
Payroll cannot opt anyone out manually.

3. How do I correct or delete old submissions after the 18:30 cut-off?

After the 18:30 deadline on pay date, corrections are no longer accepted via payroll.
For post-deadline amendments, you must contact NAERSA directly.

4. How do refunds work?

Refunds are not processed through payroll.
NAERSA will refund both the employee and the employer directly and separately.

5. What are Auto-Enrolment contribution percentages based on?

Contributions are calculated on Revenue Gross Pay, which includes overtime, bonuses, commission, BIK, and all other taxable pay elements.

6. When do NAERSA update their records?

  • Revenue earnings data updates every Thursday evening

  • Voluntary opt-out updates occur nightly

  • No intra-day updates

  • A 13 week rolling 'look back' window on payroll submissions are used to determine eligibility
7. Will employees with a CWPS be enrolled?

If the CWPS was set up as an RBS (Retirement Benefit Scheme) type pension, then NAERSA will have retrieved this information from Revenue.
In that case, the employment is considered exempt, and the employee will not be auto-enrolled.

8. What happens if an employee’s pay drops below €20,000 after being enrolled?

Once NAERSA determines an employee is eligible and they are enrolled in MyFutureFund, future fluctuations in income are not considered.
The participant remains active regardless of later income changes.

9. If an employee has multiple concurrent employments, none earning over €20,000 individually, but combined exceed €20,000, will they be enrolled?

Yes.
The €20,000 threshold is assessed across all employments combined, as reported to Revenue.
If total earnings exceed €20,000, the employee becomes eligible.

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