Statutory sick pay in Ireland: the hair salon employer's guide for 2026

The call every Irish salon owner dreads lands at 8am on a Saturday: your colourist is sick, genuinely sick, and her column is booked solid from 9 until 6. In that moment you have two completely different problems. One is legal: the Sick Leave Act 2022 obliges you, the employer, to pay her for certified sick days, at a rate the law fixes, with records the law requires. The other is commercial: eight or nine booked clients are about to arrive for a stylist who is not there, and how fast you reach them decides whether they rebook with you or quietly drift to the salon across the road.

This guide covers both, for a hair salon in the Republic of Ireland. The legal half first, because it is the half most pages on the internet currently get wrong: in 2026 the statutory entitlement is 5 days, not the 7 or 10 days you will still find confidently stated on out-of-date articles. Then the operational half: rebooking a sick stylist's clients fast, the roster knock-on, and where a booking tool like ViteUneCoupe's free salon booking software genuinely helps and where it does not. Everything legal below was checked in October 2026 on citizensinformation.ie, workplacerelations.ie and the Irish Statute Book, and none of it is legal advice: for anything borderline, or any employment question beyond sick pay, the Workplace Relations Commission's information service is the place to ask.

How many statutory sick days in 2026? Five, and here is why the internet says otherwise

The Sick Leave Act 2022 created Ireland's first statutory sick pay (SSP) scheme, and it was designed to phase in: 3 paid sick days from January 2023, 5 days from January 2024, then a planned escalation to 7 days in 2025 and 10 days in 2026. Thousands of articles were written on that timetable, and many were never updated.

The escalation did not happen. On 8 April 2025 the Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment confirmed that the entitlement would remain unchanged at 5 days per calendar year, citing the cumulative cost pressure on employers, particularly in retail and hospitality (checked in October 2026). So:

If a page tells you that you owe 7 or 10 statutory sick days this year, it is wrong. The entitlement in 2026 is 5 days per calendar year per employee, as confirmed on the Citizens Information sick leave page (checked in October 2026). Future increases remain possible, so re-check each January rather than assuming.

Who qualifies, and what exactly you pay

The scheme is simple once the moving parts are laid out. An employee qualifies for statutory sick pay when all three of these hold:

• they are an employee (including apprentices, staff on probation, and part-timers);
• they have 13 weeks of continuous service with you before the sick day;
• they are certified by a registered medical practitioner as unfit to work, and should be certified from day 1 of the absence.

Three salon-relevant details inside those rules:

• Part-timers get the full 5 days. A stylist on three days a week has the same 5-day entitlement as a full-timer; her daily rate is just calculated on her own pay. There is no pro-rating of the number of days.
• The 13 weeks survive a short gap. If a stylist leaves and comes back to you within 26 weeks, her service counts as continuous. A summer leaver rehired for the Christmas rush may already qualify on day one.
• No waiting days. Sick pay runs from the first certified day; you cannot impose a waiting period, and the days may be consecutive or scattered across the year. Unused days do not carry into the next calendar year.

The rate: 70% of normal daily pay, capped at €110 a day

You pay 70% of the employee's normal daily pay, up to a maximum of €110 per day, per the Citizens Information guidance (checked in October 2026). Normal daily pay includes any regular bonus or allowance that does not change week to week, but excludes overtime and commission, which matters in salons where stylists earn retail or service commission: the commission stays out of the calculation. If pay varies week to week, use the average over the 13 weeks before the sick leave.

Two worked examples, arithmetic only:

• a stylist on €14.50 an hour working an 8-hour day earns €116 a day; 70% is €81.20, under the cap, so that is the day's sick pay;
• a senior stylist whose normal day is worth €170 would be due €119 at 70%, so the cap applies and you pay €110.

What five sick days actually cost your salon is therefore bounded: at most €550 per employee per year in sick pay itself. The bigger cost is usually the empty column, which is the second half of this article. For the wider picture of what a stylist costs you per hour once PRSI, leave and public holidays are added, see our guide to hairdresser wages in Ireland.

If you already run your own sick pay scheme

An employer scheme can replace SSP only if it is more favourable, viewed as a whole, than the statutory scheme. If yours is, the employee is paid under your scheme and does not get SSP on top. If your "scheme" is less generous on any overall view, the statutory minimum still applies. A line in the contract saying "no sick pay" has been void since 2023.

After day 5: Illness Benefit takes over, not you

Statutory sick pay is employer-funded, but it ends at day 5. From day 6 of a certified illness, an employee with enough PRSI contributions applies to the Department of Social Protection for Illness Benefit, paid directly to them, not through you. In 2026 the maximum personal rate is €254 a week, with lower bands for lower earners, per the Citizens Information Illness Benefit page (checked in October 2026). If the employee has already used their 5 statutory days earlier in the year and falls sick again, Illness Benefit can start from day 4 of the new illness, after the standard 3 waiting days.

The practical point for you: a long absence does not mean open-ended wages. Your legal payment obligation is the 5 statutory days (or your own more generous scheme); beyond that, the State system carries the income support, and your problem becomes cover and rostering rather than payroll.

The paperwork: records for four years

The Sick Leave Act puts a specific record-keeping duty on employers. For every employee who takes statutory sick leave you must record, per the WRC's sick leave guidance (checked in October 2026):

• the employee's period of employment;
• the dates (and times, for part days) of statutory sick leave taken;
• the rate of sick pay paid for each day.

Keep those records for four years. Failing to keep them is an offence with a fine of up to €2,500. For a small salon the fix is unglamorous and five minutes' work: a simple sick leave log per employee, updated the week the absence happens, filed with the medical cert. Your payroll software or accountant can usually hold this, but the legal duty is yours.

What you may not do

This is where salon owners get into real trouble, usually without meaning to. Under the Act:

• No penalisation. You cannot dismiss, demote, cut the hours of, threaten or otherwise treat an employee unfavourably for taking or planning to take statutory sick leave. "You've used your sick days, so you're off the Saturday rota" is exactly the kind of quiet penalisation the Act prohibits.
• No forcing annual leave. If an employee is sick and certified, you cannot insist those days come out of her annual leave; certified sick days during booked holidays do not count as annual leave either.
• No waiting days, no "cert from day 3" policies for the statutory entitlement: certification is from day 1, from any registered medical practitioner.

An employee who believes they were refused sick pay or penalised can complain to the Workplace Relations Commission within 6 months, and an adjudicator can award compensation of up to 4 weeks' remuneration. One genuine safety valve exists on the employer side: a business in severe financial difficulty can apply to the Labour Court for a temporary exemption from paying SSP, granted for between 3 and 12 months, though for a sum capped at €550 per employee per year this is rarely the battle worth fighting.

Two boundaries on scope, stated plainly. First, none of this applies to a self-employed chair renter: she has no employer, so no statutory sick pay from you, which is one more reason the employee-versus-renter line must be clean (see chair rental in an Irish hair salon). Second, sick leave questions shade quickly into wider employment law: suspected pattern absence, dismissal during long-term illness, disability and reasonable accommodation. Those are beyond this article and beyond generic internet guidance; put them to the WRC information line or an employment solicitor before acting.

The other emergency: a sick stylist is a column of booked clients

The law tells you what to pay. It says nothing about the eight clients booked into the sick stylist's chair, and that is where the real Saturday is won or lost. The salons that handle it well all run some version of the same drill:

1. See the damage in one glance. If bookings live in an online diary with one calendar per stylist, the sick stylist's column is a list you can read from your phone at 8am: names, services, times, contact details. If they live in a paper book at the salon, you are driving in before you can even start.
2. Triage by service. A dry cut can often slide to another stylist the same day; a full head of highlights with a colourist the client has seen for years usually cannot. Rebook the loyal colour clients directly with their own stylist's next free slots first, because they are the revenue you most need to keep.
3. Contact affected clients immediately, before they travel. A client told at 8.30am that her 11am is moving is an inconvenience; a client who finds out at the desk is a lost client. Work through the column by phone for the morning appointments and email for the afternoon.
4. Fill what you can. Freed slots on other stylists' columns are sellable: this is the same muscle as filling any gap, and our guide to reducing no-shows in an Irish salon covers keeping the diary full when holes appear.
5. Fix the roster, not just the day. An absence that runs past a day or two becomes a rostering problem: cover for late evenings, the Saturday rotation, breaks that still have to happen with one fewer pair of hands. The legal rules that constrain the reshuffle (rest periods, notice of hours, the shop employee lunch break) are in our guide to staff rosters in an Irish hair salon.

Where ViteUneCoupe fits, honestly

ViteUneCoupe is a booking system, so let us be precise about which half of this article it belongs to. It is not an HR or payroll tool: it does not track sick leave balances, calculate 70% rates, store medical certs or produce the four-year records the Act requires. That side stays with your payroll process.

What it does carry is the operational half. The free plan gives every stylist their own schedule and calendar behind one online booking page, with unlimited bookings, 0% commission permanently, and a client database, so on the morning a stylist rings in sick you open her column from your phone, see every affected client with their contact details, block her availability so no new bookings land on the empty chair, and start moving people. On the Standard plan, at 29 € ex-VAT per month with no commitment, every rebooked appointment triggers an automatic confirmation email to the client with the new time, and reminder emails reduce the chance the rearranged visit is forgotten (email only: ViteUneCoupe sends no SMS on any plan). An anti no-show bank card footprint is coming soon in the Standard + Anti No-Show plan at 49 € ex-VAT per month. None of that makes a sick day cheap; it makes it a 20-minute phone session instead of a lost Saturday.

Frequently asked questions

How many statutory sick days are there in Ireland in 2026?

Five paid days per calendar year, at 70% of normal daily pay capped at €110 a day. The planned increases to 7 days (2025) and 10 days (2026) were paused by the government in April 2025 and have not been reinstated, so older articles quoting 7 or 10 days are out of date. Check Citizens Information each January in case the escalation resumes.

Does a part-time stylist get the full 5 sick days?

Yes. Part-time employees have the same 5-day entitlement as full-timers once they have 13 weeks of continuous service; only the daily rate differs, since it is 70% of their own normal daily pay up to the €110 cap. Apprentices and staff on probation are covered too.

Can I insist on a medical cert from the first day?

Yes. The statutory entitlement only arises for days certified by a registered medical practitioner, and certification should run from day 1. What you cannot do is impose waiting days: once the absence is certified, sick pay is due from the first day.

Does a chair renter get statutory sick pay from the salon?

No. Statutory sick pay is an employee right; a genuinely self-employed chair renter has no employer and carries her own sickness risk (and may claim Illness Benefit on her own PRSI if eligible). If you control her hours and work like an employee's, though, the relationship may be employment in substance, with sick pay among the entitlements attached.

Who pays after the 5 statutory days are used?

Not you, unless your own scheme is more generous. From day 6 of a certified illness, an employee with enough PRSI contributions claims Illness Benefit from the Department of Social Protection, paid directly to them (maximum personal rate €254 a week in 2026).

What records must I keep, and for how long?

For each employee who takes statutory sick leave: their period of employment, the dates of sick leave taken, and the rate paid, kept for four years. Failure to keep the records is an offence carrying a fine of up to €2,500. For anything beyond sick pay itself, such as dismissal during illness or disputed absence patterns, contact the Workplace Relations Commission.