First Contributions Under Auto-enrolment Scheme to be Collected in January 2026

Minister for Social Protection, Dara Calleary TD, has announced that the collection of contributions for the Automatic Enrolment retirement savings system called My Future Fund will begin from 1^st January 2026. It had previously been planned to begin contributions from 30^th September 2025.

The Minister set out several factors for his decision including:

• Alignment of the new system with the standard tax year,
• Additional time for Organisations and payroll providers to ready their systems for the launch, and
• Additional lead-in time for Employers, particularly small and micro businesses, to ensure they can be compliant with the legislation from the start.

This decision means that payroll providers will be able to incorporate any software updates within their normal annual work schedule. This includes incorporating any changes that may arise from Budget 2026 this autumn. Employers will thereby have to update their payroll systems just once, reducing the amount of administrative work they will have to do. The government is intent on ensuring the administrative burden of this new system should be kept to a minimum for Employers.

What this means for Employers

Collection of contributions and enrolment into My Future Fund will now begin from 1^st January 2026 rather than from 30^th September 2025. This means that no contributions will be sought or collected until the first time an Employer runs payroll after this date. This delay gives Employers and their payroll providers an additional three months to get ready for the system.

This will not impact the work on determining eligibility which will be ongoing before this date. By doing this, it means 1^st January 2026 could see the first participants in My Future Fund enrolled from that day. Employers should budget for this eventuality and ensure that they are able to begin paying contributions as soon as they receive notice from the National Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings Authority.