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Key Findings

There were 39,028 claims for maternity benefit and 25,442 for paternity benefit paid in 2022

Online ISSN: 2009-5619
CSO statistical publication, , 11am
A CSO Frontier Series Output

This publication is categorised as a CSO Frontier Series Outputs. Particular care must be taken when interpreting the statistics in this release as it may use new methods which are under development and/or data sources which may be incomplete, for example new administrative data sources. 

Key Findings

  • There were 39,028 women who availed of maternity benefit in 2022, which corresponds to 5.5 per 100 female employees, down from 7.2 in 2021, reflecting a rise in employment participation over the same period.

  • Human Health & Social Work Activities had the highest proportion of maternity benefit recipients at 7.0 per 100 employees in 2022, while the lowest proportion was in Accommodation & Food Service Activities at 2.5.

  • Almost one-third of women that started maternity in 2021 did not receive any payment from their employer during their leave period.

  • Over 82% of women that started maternity in 2020 returned to work for the same employer within six months of their maternity ending.

  • Paternity benefit was paid to 3.4 per 100 male employees in 2022, down from 3.9 in 2021.

  • The highest proportion of paternity benefit recipients in 2022 was in Public Administration & Defence at 5.3 per 100 employees, while the lowest was in Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing at 1.5.

  • In 2020, just over 50% of fathers in employment did not claim paternity benefit, up from 48.2% in 2019. Accommodation & Food Service Activities had the highest proportion of fathers that did not take paternity benefit at 73.1% while Industry had the lowest at 38.6% that same year.

  • In 2022, for both maternity and paternity recipients, the highest proportions were in large enterprises at 6.3 per 100 female employees and 4.0 per 100 male employees respectively.

Statistician's Comment

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (05 May 2023) published a Frontier Series release; Employment Analysis of Maternity and Paternity Benefits 2019-2022.

Commenting on the release, Paddy Furlong, Statistician with the Statistical Systems Co-ordination Unit of the CSO, said: "There were 39,028 claims for maternity benefit paid in 2022, corresponding to 5.5 per 100 female employees. For paternity benefit, there were 25,442 claims paid in 2022 or 3.4 per 100 male employees.

Maternity Benefit

The proportion of maternity benefit recipients calculated per 100 female employees in the 15 to 44 age bracket has been declining since 2016, dropping from 6.9 per 100 in 2016 to 6.1 per 100 in 2020. There was a notable increase up to a peak level of 7.2 in 2021, before falling back to 5.5 in 2022. The 2021 peak coincides with a drop in the labour force size as well as a small increase in the birth rate for that year, both of which were most likely impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Almost one-third of women that started maternity leave in 2021 did not receive any payment from their employer during their leave period. However, when considering total payments, inclusive of the maternity benefit plus any pay received from the employer, fewer than 15% of women ended up with pay lower than 50% of their pre-maternity level during leave.

Paternity Benefit

Year on year, the proportion of paternity benefit recipients per 100 employees has not varied too much since the benefit was introduced in 2016. As with maternity benefit there was a peak in 2021 related to the pandemic. It is notable, though, that in sectors such as Accommodation & Food Service Activities the percentage of fathers in employment that do not take paternity benefit has substantially risen from 52% in 2017 to 73% in 2020.

Parent’s Benefit

Claims for parent’s benefit, which provides an additional number of weeks' leave that both parents can claim up until their child’s second birthday, have risen dramatically since it was introduced in 2019. Some 63% of maternity benefit recipients starting maternity leave in 2021 went on to take up this parent’s benefit leave. In that same year, 39% of paternity benefit recipients went on to take up this benefit.

Employers and Maternity and Paternity Benefit

In 2022, for both maternity and paternity recipients, the highest proportions were in large enterprises (250+ employees) at 6.3 per 100 female employees and 4.0 per 100 male employees respectively. Micro-enterprises (0 to 9 employees) had the lowest benefit recipient proportions at 4.8 for maternity and 2.5 for paternity for the same year.

The sector with the highest proportion of maternity benefit recipients in 2022 was Human Health & Social Work Activities at 7.0 per 100 female employees, while Public Administration & Defence had the highest proportion of maternity benefit recipients at 5.3 per 100 male employees.

Return to Work

More than 82% of women that started maternity leave in 2020 returned to work for the same employer within six months of their maternity leave ending. For this same cohort that started maternity leave in 2020, in the 12 months following their last maternity payment, 66% remained with the same employer, 18% were working with a new employer, 3% were on a new maternity leave, and 13% were no longer in employment.

COVID-19 Impacts

The impact of the pandemic can be seen throughout this analysis. In addition to the reduction seen in the labour force in 2021, it was noted that the cohort which started maternity leave in 2019, that were due to return to the workplace during the pandemic, were least likely to return to employment.

The cohort starting maternity leave in 2020 were least likely to receive any top-up pay from their employer during maternity leave. It will be interesting to see how the trends for benefit uptake, maternity payment, and employment status will stabilise in the years after the pandemic.”

Headline Table

The headline table shows the numbers and rates for maternity and paternity benefit claims paid between 2019 and 2022.

Table 1.1 Maternity and Paternity Benefit Recipients and Rates, 2019-2022
    number
 2019202020212022
Maternity Benefit Recipients42,14739,84043,90439,028
Paternity Benefit Recipients26,63024,27026,46324,713
     
  per 100 employees 1
Maternity Benefit Rate6.46.17.25.5
Paternity Benefit Rate3.73.33.93.3
1 Female employees for maternity benefit rate and male employees for paternity benefit rate. See Background Notes for more details.

Employment Analysis of Maternity and Paternity Benefits

This is the second CSO release examining employment data for people who received maternity and paternity benefits and is an example of the policy-relevant research projects the CSO are developing as part of their leadership role of the Irish Statistical System. 

A key objective of First 5, A Whole-of-Government Strategy for Babies, Young Children and their Families 2019-2028 is that “parents will be assisted to balance working and caring to contribute to optimum child development and to best suit their family circumstances”. Following discussions with the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, the CSO agreed to explore the potential of linking administrative data from Revenue and the Department of Social Protection, with CSO-held datasets to provide information on the areas of maternity and paternity benefits.

The definition of a maternity and paternity benefit recipient used in this report is based on payment of maternity or paternity benefits in the relevant year. Rates of benefits are calculated using the total number of employees aged 15-44, the main child-bearing age group, extracted from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) each year (See Background Notes for more details). This methodology for defining the target population differs from that used in the previous release. Benefit rates for the years covered by the previous release have been recalculated using this method and updated in the corresponding tables in the data portal: Employment Analysis of Maternity and Paternity Benefit Data Tables

For this release all results for 2019 have been recalculated as more data has become available for that year since the time of the first publication. All results for 2022 should be considered as provisional as more updated data will become available in the coming months.