Dara Calleary
Minister for Social Protection, Department of Social Protection
Ireland’s new auto-enrolment scheme launches in 2026, matching worker and employer savings with a State top-up to make retirement saving simpler and fairer.
Recently, Minister for Social Protection Dara Calleary said MyFutureFund is about ensuring workers have access to a quality-assured retirement savings option. It’s a transformative scheme and will bear great fruit, particularly for younger generations, and ultimately, an investment in Ireland’s future. MyFutureFund will come into effect from 1 January 2026, so how will it transform how people save for retirement?
How the retirement savings scheme works
For every €3 a worker saves, the employer will add €3, and the State will add a further €1, turning a €3 contribution into €7 going to your savings, with investment returns on top of that. All participants will be automatically enrolled into a default investment strategy that works on a life-cycle basis. Taking advantage of higher risk growth in early years and the stability of lower risk closer to retirement. But, if you want to make a choice around your investment strategy, you can choose between the high, medium and low risk strategies. There will be some administration and investment management fees, but these will be kept to a minimum and likely to be less than those typically charged for pension services.
Employees not already in a pension scheme paid through their payroll, aged 23 to 60 and earning over €20,000 across all employments, will start paying into My Future Fund in January. Employees outside of the earnings threshold and aged between 18 and 66 can also opt in, even if they don’t meet the earnings threshold.
The system itself is fully integrated into payroll systems and deductions will be taken directly at source,
Ease for employers and security for staff
While employers are legally obliged to comply with auto-enrolment, the good news is that engaging with MyFutureFund will be really easy. The fund is being fully administered by a new State authority: the National Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings Authority, based in Letterkenny. This means employers don’t have to set up a pension scheme, appoint trustees or pay fees to a service provider. Employers will have to complete their profile on the employer portal when it goes live in December and set up a payment method before January 2026.
They also don’t have to explain a multitude of differing investment options to employees. The system itself is fully integrated into payroll systems and deductions will be taken directly at source, with the State ‘top-up’ automatically added, so there will be no complex tax calculations. Best of all, the ‘fund’ moves with employees as they move between jobs, and a new employer just has to run their payroll as normal, and the employee’s pension will be covered.
For further information, see www.gov.ie/ae.
