Understanding PRSI
What the deduction buys, and the weekly thresholds that decide it.
PRSI — Pay Related Social Insurance — is the one deduction that is not really a tax. It buys entitlement. Weeks of PRSI are what qualify you for Illness Benefit, Jobseeker's Benefit, Maternity Benefit and the contributory State Pension.
Class A and the weekly threshold
Most employees are in Class A. PRSI is assessed on each pay period, converted to a weekly figure. If your reckonable weekly pay is €352 or less, you pay no employee PRSI — though your employer still pays theirs, and the week still counts towards your record.
Above €352 the employee rate applies to your whole weekly pay, not just the part above the threshold.
The rate is changing during 2026
The employee Class A rate is 4.2% from 1 October 2025, and rises by 0.15 percentage points to 4.35% on 1 October 2026. This is part of a schedule of increases announced to fund the social insurance fund, and it means a calculation for early 2026 and one for December 2026 will not match.
Our calculators use the rate in force in the middle of the tax year for annual projections, and tell you when a rate change falls inside the year you picked.
The tapered credit for low earners
Between €352.01 and €424 a week there is a PRSI credit that softens the jump. It is worth a maximum of €12 a week at the bottom of that range and reduces by one sixth of each euro earned above it, reaching zero at €424. Without it, earning one euro more than €352 would cost far more than a euro.
What it buys
Illness Benefit requires at least 104 weeks of paid contributions since you started work, plus recent contributions in the governing tax year. The contributory State Pension is built the same way, over decades. Those weeks are the reason the deduction exists.