Auto-Enrolment Calculator My Future Fund, and what opting out would really cost

Ireland has had no automatic workplace pension until now. Roughly 800,000 employees were saving nothing for retirement beyond the State Pension, and the response is My Future Fund, the automatic enrolment retirement savings system. It was created by the Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System Act 2024, is run by the National Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings Authority (NAERSA), and began collecting contributions on 1 January 2026.

It is not run by Revenue, and that is not an accident of administration: it is the whole design. A normal pension gives you income tax relief, which Revenue administers. Auto-enrolment does not. Instead the State pays money directly into your fund. Revenue's only role is supplying the payroll data NAERSA uses to work out who is eligible.

You do not apply. If you qualify, you are enrolled and the deduction appears on your payslip. The first many people hear of it is the line on their pay.

Three conditions have to be met at once:

• You are aged 23 to 60.
• You earn €20,000 or more. This counts your earnings across all your jobs, so two part-time roles under the threshold can still add up to it.
• You are not already paying into a workplace pension through payroll. An occupational scheme or a PRSA you contribute to through your employer takes you out of scope.

Outside the age range you are not enrolled automatically, but you can opt in voluntarily from 18 up to State Pension age. Below the earnings threshold you can opt in too.

The earnings test is not applied to a single annual salary figure. NAERSA looks at your Revenue earnings record over the previous 12 months, using a lookback of up to 13 weeks. So the calculator above tells you whether someone on your salary would normally be enrolled, not whether you personally have been. If you started work mid-year, changed jobs or your pay varies, you may land the other side of the line.

This is the part that catches people out, and it is the reason auto-enrolment cannot be compared to a normal pension contribution by looking at the percentage alone.

Pay into an occupational pension or a PRSA and the contribution comes off your income before income tax, so you get relief at your marginal rate: 40% if you are a higher-rate taxpayer, 20% at the standard rate. Pay into My Future Fund and you get no income tax relief at all. The State instead pays €1 into your fund for every €3 you contribute, which is 25% of the resulting €4.

The practical effect on your payslip is that your taxable pay does not change. Your PAYE, USC and PRSI are exactly what they would have been, and your take-home pay falls by the full contribution. A relieved pension contribution of the same size would cost you less in take-home, because part of it would have been tax.

Put the two incentives side by side in cash. Getting €100 into a pension costs €60 of take-home through higher-rate relief, or €80 at the standard rate. Through the State top-up it costs €75, because €1 arrives for every €3 you pay. That is before your employer's contribution, which is added on top either way. Which arrangement leaves you better off depends on your tax rate, what your employer offers, and your own circumstances, which is a question for advice rather than a percentage. Our pension tax relief calculator covers the relieved side.

Contributions start low and step up. In the current phase you pay 1.5% of gross pay, your employer matches it with 1.5%, and the State adds 0.5%: 3.5% of your pay going into the fund. The employee and employer rates then rise by 1.5 percentage points every three years until they reach 6% each, with the State top-up always a third of what you pay. At the top phase that is 14% of gross going in.

Contributions are calculated on your gross pay from the first euro. The €20,000 figure decides whether you are enrolled; it is not a floor that your contributions start above. Someone on €25,000 contributes 1.5% of €25,000, not 1.5% of the amount over €20,000.

At the other end there is a ceiling: contributions are not levied on gross pay above €80,000 in a calendar year, and both your contribution and your employer's stop there. In practice payroll stops after the pay period in which you cross it, so you may contribute on slightly more than the ceiling, and that excess is not refunded.

You cannot leave straight away, and the rules are specific about timing:

• First six months: you have to stay in. There is no opt-out in this period.
• Months seven and eight: a two-month window in which you can opt out. If you do, your own contributions are refunded to you.
• After eight months: you can no longer opt out, but you can suspend contributions at any time. Suspending stops yours, your employer's and the State's; what is already in the fund stays there until you resume.
• Two years later: if you opted out or suspended, you are automatically re-enrolled, provided you are still eligible. Opting out once is not permanent.

The arithmetic of leaving is worth doing before you decide. Your own contribution is the only part you get back into your pay. The employer match and the State top-up are money you simply stop receiving, and together they are larger than what you save. Use the calculator above for your own figures.

Every figure on this page comes from the published rules, and the take-home amounts are computed by the same engine that runs the rest of this site.

• Department of Social Protection, auto-enrolment: the contribution rates and phasing, the earnings threshold and ceiling, and the eligibility rules.
• Citizens Information, auto-enrolment pension: the opt-out window, suspension and automatic re-enrolment after two years.
• MyFutureFund: NAERSA's own site, where you can see your account.

Auto-enrolment is not administered by Revenue, because it operates outside the tax-relief system. Revenue remains the source for everything that is a tax matter, including the PAYE, USC and PRSI figures shown alongside it.