This release presents statistics on the employment characteristics of people in receipt of maternity and paternity benefits over the years 2019-2022, based on administrative data sources. The primary data source is the Revenue Commissioner’s pseudonymised PAYE Modernisation dataset of employee earnings which is linked to the Central Statistics Office (CSO) and other data to provide employment breakdowns.
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 anonymised and the results are in the form of statistical aggregates which do not identify any individuals.
The Revenue Commissioner’s PMOD is the new means of collecting employment data. The file is the most accurate source of remuneration from 2019 onwards as it provides details of gross earnings from payroll submissions.
Two datasets were used from the DSP, the BOMi and CRS.
The BOMi dataset provides payment details of maternity, paternity, adoptive and parent's benefits.
The Central Records System (CRS) of the Department of Social Protection provides information on age, gender and family relationships. Using a unique identifier (PIK), each employee in the PMOD and PIR datasets can be linked to their individual demographic characteristics on the Department of Social Protection Datasets.
The PIR is a pseudonymised income register held internally within the CSO. It contains information on income received by individuals relating to employment, self-employment and social transfers. It is derived from administrative holdings held by the Revenue Commissioners and Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection. Therefore, the PIR provides a near complete picture on individual level income, for a calendar year. All linkage is carried out by using a PIK assigned on each contributing data source. The PIK is then used to link the pseudonymised data sources together to create the PIR. The PIK protects a person’s identity but also enables linking across data sources and over time. The PIK enables high quality deterministic matching thus significantly reducing/eliminating linkage error. PIR is valid up to 2020.
Linking the unique enterprise number common to the PIR, the Revenue Commissioner's PAYE Modernisation (PMOD) file and the CSO’s Business Register allows enterprise level variables to be added to each individual employee for NACE Rev.2 industrial sectors.
The number of maternity and paternity benefits recipients for each year was taken from the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection BOMi dataset. This dataset contains pseudonymised payment data relating to people in receipt of maternity, paternity, parent’s and adoptive benefits. The number of people in receipt of benefits was based on the year of their first claim date.
Parent’s benefit was introduced in 2019. An analysis of maternity and paternity benefit recipients that were also in receipt on 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:
For the purposes of this analysis the target populations that were eligible for maternity or paternity benefits were defined as follows:
The total target population, as defined above, as well as the target populations further broken down by economic sector were taken from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) published quarterly by the CSO. The reference populations for each year were taken from the Q1 LFS for that year.
The LFS does not include a breakdown by enterprise so an estimate for these target populations was calculated from the January PMOD for each year. This was done by extracting the female and male employees within the age range and summing the total within each enterprise class.
To qualify for maternity or paternity benefit an employee must have a certain number of weeks of contributions in specific PRSI classes (A,E,H,S). Potentially the previous three years of employment can be used when determining that sufficient contributions had been made. This criteria was not applied to the definition of target populations for the following reasons :
The rates of maternity and paternity benefits were calculated using the number of recipients of a benefit divided by the relevant target population. This figure was then multiplied by 100 to achieve 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 maternity for each recipient. Some benefit recipients had more than one employer. In those cases, the employment that provided the highest total gross pay for the 6 months before maternity was chosen as the reference employment.
Pay records were extracted from PMOD. All pay records were converted to a weekly pay equivalent as maternity benefit is paid on a weekly basis.
For the pay comparisons during maternity, two measures of pay were used. The first considered only pay from the employer, if any was received, which provides an indication of sectors and enterprises which provided a top up pay to their employees during their maternity. The second measure considered total pay, which includes both the maternity benefit payment plus any pay received from the employer during maternity. This measure provided the overall impact when comparing pay before maternity to pay received during maternity.
Note that the maternity benefit could be paid directly to the employer, who would then pay it to the employee plus any additional top up. To prevent double counting of the maternity benefit, the pay for USC was used instead of gross pay. Pay for USC excludes any payments from the Department of Social Protection.
The qualifying pay records for each period were defined as below.
The 8 month period before the start of maternity was chosen as the baseline for pre-maternity pay levels. Payments from the employer 2 months immediately prior to the first benefit payment tended to be less stable (exhibited high variance) compared to previous months and so were excluded from the baseline calculation.
Pay records between the third and fifth month of maternity leave tended to be the most stable and so were deemed to be the most representative of pay received from the employer, if any, during maternity. Total pay during maternity was calculated as the average weekly pay from the employer plus the weekly maternity benefit payment.
Employer pay records in the first 6 weeks after the last maternity benefit was received also tended to be less stable and so were excluded from the post-maternity reference period. This 6 week period also covered final payments made by the employer to recipients who were not returning to work post-maternity. Pay records qualifying for inclusion were taken from the first non zero payment received after the initial 6 weeks and up to 8 months after the date of the last benefit payment.
A return to work interval was calculated for benefit recipients that returned to work for the same employer after maternity. This was calculated as the number of weeks between the receipt of the last benefit payment to the first non-zero payment record after this date. Pay records from the first 6 weeks immediately after the date of the last benefit payment were excluded as many cases were found of employees receiving 1 or 2 payments after maternity ended and then no more. These may have been final payments due from their employer or the employee was serving a notice period before finishing. Effectively those employees were not returning to work and so the 6 week period was chosen to exclude them from being counted as returnees.
Any employee with a return to work interval of 26 weeks or less was categorised as returning to work within 6 months.
The employment status 12 months after maternity ending was also assessed. This was done by checking for pay records within a window of 46 to 58 weeks after the last maternity benefit payment was received.
A man that was found to have a new parent/child relationship in the DSP CRS and was in employment during the allowed time period for claiming paternity benefit was considered to be in the cohort that could have claimed the benefit. Note that being in employment does not mean a father was eligible for the benefit as there is also a requirement to have sufficient contributions in relevant PRSI classes in the years before the birth of the child. This was not tested as part of this analysis due to the complexity involved and instead the number of fathers in employment was used as a comparative measure between economic sectors and enterprises.
Paternity benefit must be claimed within 6 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 PIR was used to determine employment. If any declared income was found in PIR in the year of the child’s birth, then the father was considered to be in 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)'
Link: Eurostat NACE 2 Classification
NACE codes were allocated accordingly as provided in PIR and PMOD.
The CSO publishes annual numbers of births:
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was significantly larger in some sectors compared to others. Figure 6.1 below shows the breakdown by sector of maternity benefit recipients that had a Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) claim prior to their maternity and those with a PUP claim subsequent to their maternity.
Maternity benefit recipients with prior PUP claims were least likely to receive any top up payment from their employer during maternity leave.
Benefit recipients with PUP claims subsequent to their maternity were least likely to return to work within 6 months of their maternity ending.
| Sector Name | Maternity Recipients with Subsequent PUP claims | Maternity Recipients with Prior PUP Claims |
|---|---|---|
| Public Administration and Defence (O) | 1.4 | 1.7 |
| Education (P) | 4.2 | 5.4 |
| Information and Communication (J) | 5.3 | 4.4 |
| Financial and Real Estate (K-L) | 6.6 | 4.2 |
| Industry (B-E) | 8.5 | 8.2 |
| Human Health and Social Work Activities (Q) | 9 | 11.4 |
| Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities (M) | 9.9 | 9 |
| Transportation and Storage (H) | 15.3 | 10.6 |
| Wholesale and Retail Trade (G) | 16.6 | 17.2 |
| Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing (A) | 16.9 | 14.9 |
| Administrative and Support Service Activities (N) | 17.9 | 16.7 |
| Construction (F) | 26.3 | 27.9 |
| Other NACE Activities (R-U) | 39 | 39.4 |
| Accommodation and Food Service Activities (I) | 43 | 41.6 |
During non-pandemic years, employees with average weekly earnings that were below the maternity benefit payment were the most likely not to receive any payment from their employer during maternity leave. Figure 6.2 shows the breakdown by sector of maternity benefit recipients with average earnings below the benefit payment.
| Sector | Mean Earnings Lower than Maternity Pay |
|---|---|
| Public Administration and Defence (O) | 1 |
| Information and Communication (J) | 1.4 |
| Financial and Real Estate (K-L) | 2.1 |
| Industry (B-E) | 2.2 |
| Education (P) | 2.7 |
| Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities (M) | 2.8 |
| Transportation and Storage (H) | 5.2 |
| Human Health and Social Work Activities (Q) | 7.1 |
| Administrative and Support Service Activities (N) | 8.2 |
| Construction (F) | 8.7 |
| Wholesale and Retail Trade (G) | 9.9 |
| Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing (A) | 15.4 |
| Other NACE Activities (R-U) | 17.5 |
| Accommodation and Food Service Activities (I) | 20.9 |
