This publication is categorised as a CSO Frontier Series Output. 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.
This release presents statistics on the employment characteristics of people in receipt of Maternity and Paternity Benefits over the years 2019-2025, based on administrative data sources. The primary data source is the Department of Social Protection Payments dataset. This provides the source cohort of benefit recipients which is linked to other administrative datasets containing information about earnings from employment or self-employment.
The results presented in this release are based on a data-matching exercise of five administrative data sources:
The linkage and analysis was undertaken by the CSO for statistical purposes in line with the Statistics Act, 1993 and the CSO Data Protocol.
Before using personal administrative data for statistical purposes, the CSO removes all identifying personal information, including the Personal Public Service Number (PPSN). The PPSN is a unique number that enables individuals to access social welfare benefits, personal taxation and other public services in Ireland. The CSO converts the PPSN to a Protected Identifier Key (PIK). The PIK is a unique and non-identifiable number which is internal to the CSO. Using the PIK enables the CSO to link and analyse data for statistical purposes, while protecting the security and confidentiality of the individual's data. PIR, CRS and CSO records were linked using the PIK for this project. All records in the datasets are pseudonymised and the results are in the form of statistical aggregates which do not identify any individuals.
The DSP Payments dataset provides payment details of Maternity, Paternity, Adoptive and Parent's benefits.
The Central Records System (CRS) of the Department of Social Protection is a central repository of person-level data for the normally resident population who pay tax; claim Social Welfare benefit or assistance; claim child benefit or receive a contributory or non-contributory pension.
The Revenue Commissioners’ PAYE Modernisation (PMOD) dataset contains payslip level data for persons in employment from 2019 onwards.
The annual self-assessed income tax return form is called Form 11. Self-assessed taxpayers are self-employed individuals and/or individuals with non-PAYE income. Due to the nature of self-assessment, data for a calendar year is only complete three years after the reference year. This limits the analysis of self-employed PRSA contributors in this release to a maximum year of 2023.
The CSO's Central Business Register (CBR) is a register of all economic enterprises in Ireland. The CBR integrates administrative data, survey data, and large enterprise profiling work. It also includes a link between Enterprise Number (common to PMOD) and business size indicator. The CBR provides the statistical units as recommended in Eurostat’s “Business Register Recommendations Manual" and the UNECE's “Guideline on Statistical Business Registers 2” as well as Regulation (EC) No 177/20083.
Benefits recipients data is obtained from the Department of Social Protection Payments dataset and relates to people in receipt of Maternity, Paternity and Parent's Benefits. As these payments may cross over multiple calendar years, annual statistics are based on the date of the first payment.
Parent’s Benefit was introduced in 2019. An analysis of Maternity and Paternity Benefit recipients who also claimed Parent’s Benefit has been included.
There were typically less than 30 claims for Adoptive Benefit in each year so this has been excluded from the analysis.
Details of the benefit schemes can be found at the following links:
The benefit rate was defined as the number of benefit recipients, divided by the population of those eligible for the benefit, known as the target population. Eligibility in the context of this release differs from the DSP eligibility criteria, which is also based on historical PRSI contributions.
A target population of those who were eligible for Maternity, Paternity and Parent's Benefit was extracted from the CSO Labour Force Survey (LFS) data, with the following characteristics:
The LFS is published quarterly, and the Q1 data was used as a yearly reference point for calculating the benefit rates. A breakdown by economic sector was also included in the LFS data.
Enterprise size was estimated for these target populations from the January PMOD for each year, linked to the CBR enterprise size class.
The benefit rates were multiplied by 100 to produce a rate per 100 employees from each target population.
Pay comparisons were made for Maternity Benefit recipients using an estimated average weekly pay from before, during and after the benefit period for each recipient. Where a person had multiple overlapping employments, the employment that provided the highest total gross pay for the 6 months before the benefit started was chosen as the reference employment.
For pay comparisons during Maternity Leave, two categories of income were analysed. The first, employer top-up pay, was the gross PAYE income received during Maternity Benefit. This gave an indication of sectors and enterprises which continued to provide any level of pay to their employees during the leave period. The second, total pay (employer top-up plus Maternity Benefit), indicated the overall impact when comparing pay before Maternity Leave to pay received during Maternity Leave.
The qualifying pay records for each period were defined as below.
The 8 months prior to the start of a Maternity Benefit claim were chosen as the baseline for pre-maternity pay levels. However, as pay levels in the two months immediately prior to the first benefit payment tended to be inconsistent compared to previous months, that period was excluded from the baseline calculation.
For those who continued to receive top-up pay from their employer, pay records between the third and fifth month of a Maternity Benefit claim tended to be the most stable and so were deemed to be the most representative. Total pay during Maternity Leave was calculated as the average weekly pay from the employer plus the weekly Maternity Benefit payment amount.
Employer pay records in the first 6 weeks after the last Maternity Benefit payment was received also tended to be less stable, and so these weeks were excluded from the post-maternity reference period. Pay records qualifying for inclusion were taken from the first payment received after the initial 6 weeks and up to 8 months after the date of the last benefit payment.
An analysis of Maternity Benefit recipients resuming work was made at two time intervals.
The first categorised if an employee returned to work for the same employer within 6 months of Maternity Benefit ending, or not, by examining pay records within a window of 6 to 26 weeks after the final benefit payment.
The second categorised employment status after 12 months by examining pay records within a window of 46 to 58 weeks after the final benefit payment. Each benefit recipient fell into one of four categories
A father in employment in the first 6 months of their child's birth, as registered with DSP, was considered to be in the cohort eligible for Paternity Benefit. Note this differs to the official Paternity Benefit scheme eligibility rules where there is also a requirement to be covered by social insurance (PRSI). Data on social insurance (PRSI) contributions was not available for this analysis.
Paternity Benefit must be claimed within six months of the birth of the child. A father that did not receive any Paternity Benefit payment during this time was deemed not to have taken the benefit.
For PAYE workers PMOD was used to determine that the father was in employment by extracting any pay records from a window spanning 2 weeks before the child’s birth to 32 weeks after the birth.
For the self-employed, Revenue's Income Tax Return and Self-Assessment (Form 11) records were used to determine employment. If any declared income was found in an individual's Form 11 return in the year of the child's birth, then the father was considered to be in self-employment.
The four main size classes of enterprise are as follows :
| Enterprise Class | Size |
|---|---|
| Micro | <10 employees |
| Small | 10-49 employees |
| Medium | 50-249 employees |
| Large | 250+ employees |
Enterprise size was allocated based on the CSO Business Register dataset.
The economic sector classification (NACE) is based on the ‘Statistical Classification of Economic Activities in the European Community, Rev. 2 (2008)'
Further details can be found on the Eurostat website: Eurostat NACE 2 Classification
Public sector data comprises employments in the Civil Service, Defence, An Garda Síochána, Education, Regional bodies, Health and Semi-State, both commercial and non-commercial.
Quarterly and annual summaries of the number of births are published by CSO Vital Statistics
Employees with average weekly earnings that were below the Maternity Benefit payment were the most likely not to receive employer top-up pay during Maternity Leave.
Figure 7.1 shows the breakdown by sector of Maternity Benefit recipients with average earnings below the benefit amount.
| Sector | Mean Earnings Lower than Maternity Pay |
|---|---|
| Information and Communication (J) | 1.5 |
| Public Administration and Defence (O) | 1.7 |
| Financial and Real Estate (K-L) | 2.0 |
| Industry (B-E) | 2.2 |
| Education (P) | 2.6 |
| Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities (M) | 2.8 |
| Human Health and Social Work Activities (Q) | 4.7 |
| Transportation and Storage (H) | 4.9 |
| Administrative and Support Service Activities (N) | 8.0 |
| Wholesale and Retail Trade (G) | 10.1 |
| Construction (F) | 10.8 |
| Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing (A) | 16.5 |
| Other NACE Activities (R-U) | 17.0 |
| Accommodation and Food Service Activities (I) | 21.7 |
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