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

The Minister set out a number of factors for his decision including:

• Alignment of the new system with the standard tax year;
• Additional time for payroll providers, especially smaller 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;