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.
There were 39,268 claims for Maternity Benefit beginning in 2025, which corresponds to 5.1 per 100 female employees. There were 27,749 Paternity Benefit claims, which corresponds to 3.4 per 100 male employees in 2025.
The Human Health & Social Work Activities sector had the highest proportion of Maternity Benefit recipients at 6.5 per 100 female employees in 2025, while the lowest proportion was in Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing at 2.1.
The sector with the highest proportion of Paternity Benefit recipients was Public Administration & Defence at 5.1 per 100 male employees in 2025, while the lowest proportion was in Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing at 0.9.
Over a quarter (26.1%) of those that started Maternity Benefit in 2024 did not receive any payment from their employer during their leave period, meaning they relied solely on the statutory Maternity Benefit payment.
For public sector employees who started Maternity Benefit in 2024, over 84% continued to receive an income equivalent to their pre-maternity pay when including Maternity Benefit plus employer top-up payments. For private sector employees this figure was 46.6%.
Almost 85% of claimants that started Maternity Benefit in 2023 returned to work for the same employer within six months of their Maternity Benefit ending.
Some 77.7% of Maternity Benefit recipients starting Maternity Leave in 2023 went on to take up Parent’s Benefit.
In 2023, 54.7% of fathers in employment claimed Paternity Benefit, up from 52.9% in 2022.
The headline table (Table 1.1) shows the numbers and rates for Maternity and Paternity benefit claims paid between 2019 and 2025.
| Table 1.1 Maternity and Paternity Benefit Recipients and Rates, 2019-2025 | |||||||
| number | |||||||
| 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | |
| Maternity Benefit Recipients | 42,134 | 39,828 | 43,928 | 39,203 | 39,944 | 39,529 | 39,268 |
| Paternity Benefit Recipients | 26,630 | 24,276 | 26,516 | 25,769 | 26,289 | 27,542 | 27,749 |
| per 100 employees 1 | |||||||
| Maternity Benefit Rate | 6.4 | 6.1 | 7.1 | 5.5 | 5.4 | 5.3 | 5.1 |
| Paternity Benefit Rate | 3.7 | 3.3 | 3.9 | 3.5 | 3.3 | 3.5 | 3.4 |
| 1 Female employees for Maternity Benefit rate and male employees for Paternity Benefit rate. See Background Notes for more details. | |||||||
This is the third 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 pseudonymised administrative data from Revenue and the Department of Social Protection, with other CSO-held datasets to provide information on Maternity and Paternity benefits.
The definition of a Maternity and Paternity benefit recipient used in this release 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, extracted from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) each year (See Background Notes).
For this release all results for 2019 to 2022 have been recalculated as more data has become available for those years since the time of the previous publication. All results for 2025 should be considered as provisional as more updated data will become available in the coming months.
Learn about our data and confidentiality safeguards, and the steps we take to produce statistics that can be trusted by all.
Statistician's Comment
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (19 June 2026) published a Frontier Series release; Employment Analysis of Maternity and Paternity Benefits 2019 - 2025.
Commenting on the release, Fiachra Cahill, Statistician with the Statistical Systems Co-ordination Unit of the CSO, said: "There were 39,268 claims for Maternity Benefit, and 27,749 claims for Paternity Benefit that began in 2025. This release provides insight into some characteristics of these claimants, such as income and employment for Maternity Benefit recipients, uptake rates of Paternity Benefit (54.7% in 2023), and emerging patterns of how Parent's Benefit, which is nine weeks of paid leave, is being taken. Please note that all results for 2025 should be considered provisional. The CSO will update this data as more information becomes available.
Maternity Benefit
Over a quarter (26.1%) of those that started Maternity Benefit in 2024 did not receive any payment from their employer during their leave period. However, when considering total payments, inclusive of the Maternity Benefit plus any employer top-up, fewer than 14% ended up with pay lower than 50% of their pre-maternity level, during leave. In the same year, almost 60% continued to receive full pay during Maternity Leave.
The proportion of Maternity Benefit recipients per 100 female employees in the 15 to 44 age range has been declining since 2016, dropping from 6.9 per 100 in 2016 to 5.1 per 100 in 2025. There was a notable increase up to a peak level of 7.1 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.
Paternity Benefit
Paternity Benefit is where parents can claim two continuous weeks of paid benefit within the first six months of the child's birth. Uptake of Paternity Benefit has been fairly stable since 2019, increasing slightly from 51.5% in 2019 to 54.7% in 2023. Since the first full year of its availability in 2017, the proportion of Paternity Benefit recipients per 100 male employees has been quite stable with a low of 3.3 in 2020 and a high of 3.9 in 2021. The proportion in 2025 was 3.4 per 100 employees.
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 continuously since it was introduced in 2019. Some 77.7% of Maternity Benefit recipients who started Maternity Leave in 2023 went on to take up Parent’s Benefit. In that same year, 48.2% of Paternity Benefit recipients went on to take up this benefit.
Employers and Maternity and Paternity Benefit
In 2025, for both Maternity and Paternity Benefit, the highest proportion of recipients were in large enterprises (250 and over employees) at 6.0 and 4.1 per 100 employees, respectively. Small enterprises (10 to 49 employees) had the lowest Maternity Benefit recipient proportions at 3.6, while micro-enterprises (0 to 9 employees) had the lowest Paternity Benefit proportions at 2.3 for the same year.
The sector with the highest proportion of Maternity Benefit recipients in 2025 was Human Health & Social Work Activities at 6.5 per 100 female employees, while Public Administration & Defence and Administrative & Support Service Activities had the joint highest proportion of Paternity Benefit recipients at 5.1 per 100 male employees.
Return to Work
Of those that claimed Maternity Benefit in 2025, almost 85% returned to work for the same employer within six months of their Maternity Benefit ending. After 12 months, 71.6% remained with the same employer, 13.7% were working with a new employer, 2.4% were claiming a new Maternity Leave, and 12.4% were no longer in employment."