Maternity Benefit & Leave Timeline Calculator (Ireland)
Check Maternity Benefit amounts and map your leave timeline, including employer top-up interaction.
In plain terms: Maternity Benefit, Paternity Benefit and Parent's Benefit are weekly payments from the Department of Social Protection while you are on statutory leave — a flat rate per week, regardless of your salary. They are liable to income tax but never to USC or PRSI, and how that tax actually gets collected is the part this calculator maps out, week by week.
Take-home on leave: €299.00/week vs €595.51/week working (both after deductions) — details below the form.
Estimated take-home during Maternity Benefit leave (26 weeks, State benefit only)
€299.00 per leave week
€296.51 (49.8%) less than your normal €595.51 week. Weekly figures vary slightly across the 2026 PRSI rate periods — exact figures in the table. Assumes you qualify for the benefit — see the notes.
Week commencing (dd/mm) — dashed line = normal week €595.51 — † = priced at current-year rates
Over the 26 leave weeks: €7,774.00 (€7,774.00 State benefit). Working those weeks instead: €15,460.16 — you'd have €7,686.16 (49.7%) less on leave. (The working-weeks figure prices each week at its own date — the 2026 PRSI rate change means it can differ slightly from your normal week × 26.)
Checking against your payslip: depending on your employer's arrangement, the Benefit may be paid to you directly or routed through payroll — so your payslip may show one combined amount rather than this table's benefit/top-up split. The number to compare is the weekly take-home here against what actually lands in your account for that week.
Week-by-week breakdown
| Week commencing | Week | Take-home | State benefit | Employer pay | Income tax | USC | PRSI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24/08/2026 | Normal | €595.51 | — | €700.00 | −€63.07 | −€12.02 | −€29.40 |
| 31/08/2026 | Normal | €595.51 | — | €700.00 | −€63.07 | −€12.02 | −€29.40 |
| 07/09/2026 | Leave 1 | €299.00 | €299.00 | — | — | — | — |
| 14/09/2026 | Leave 2 | €299.00 | €299.00 | — | — | — | — |
| 21/09/2026 | Leave 3 | €299.00 | €299.00 | — | — | — | — |
| 28/09/2026 | Leave 4 | €299.00 | €299.00 | — | — | — | — |
| 05/10/2026 | Leave 5 | €299.00 | €299.00 | — | — | — | — |
| 12/10/2026 | Leave 6 | €299.00 | €299.00 | — | — | — | — |
| 19/10/2026 | Leave 7 | €299.00 | €299.00 | — | — | — | — |
| 26/10/2026 | Leave 8 | €299.00 | €299.00 | — | — | — | — |
| 02/11/2026 | Leave 9 | €299.00 | €299.00 | — | — | — | — |
| 09/11/2026 | Leave 10 | €299.00 | €299.00 | — | — | — | — |
| 16/11/2026 | Leave 11 | €299.00 | €299.00 | — | — | — | — |
| 23/11/2026 | Leave 12 | €299.00 | €299.00 | — | — | — | — |
| 30/11/2026 | Leave 13 | €299.00 | €299.00 | — | — | — | — |
| 07/12/2026 | Leave 14 | €299.00 | €299.00 | — | — | — | — |
| 14/12/2026 | Leave 15 | €299.00 | €299.00 | — | — | — | — |
| 21/12/2026 | Leave 16 | €299.00 | €299.00 | — | — | — | — |
| 28/12/2026 | Leave 17 | €299.00 | €299.00 | — | — | — | — |
| 04/01/2027 † | Leave 18 | €299.00 | €299.00 | — | — | — | — |
| 11/01/2027 † | Leave 19 | €299.00 | €299.00 | — | — | — | — |
| 18/01/2027 † | Leave 20 | €299.00 | €299.00 | — | — | — | — |
| 25/01/2027 † | Leave 21 | €299.00 | €299.00 | — | — | — | — |
| 01/02/2027 † | Leave 22 | €299.00 | €299.00 | — | — | — | — |
| 08/02/2027 † | Leave 23 | €299.00 | €299.00 | — | — | — | — |
| 15/02/2027 † | Leave 24 | €299.00 | €299.00 | — | — | — | — |
| 22/02/2027 † | Leave 25 | €299.00 | €299.00 | — | — | — | — |
| 01/03/2027 † | Leave 26 | €299.00 | €299.00 | — | — | — | — |
| 08/03/2027 † | Normal | €594.46 | — | €700.00 | −€63.07 | −€12.02 | −€30.45 |
| 15/03/2027 † | Normal | €594.46 | — | €700.00 | −€63.07 | −€12.02 | −€30.45 |
† Week starts after 31/12/2026 — priced at 2026 rates until Budget 2027 rates are published.
How the benefit is taxed — the part everyone gets wrong
Maternity Benefit is paid to you without any tax taken off, and it never has USC or PRSI charged on it. But it is liable to income tax. Revenue collects that tax by squeezing your payroll numbers, not the benefit itself:
- Your weekly benefit is annualised: €299.00 × 52 = €15,548.
- Your standard-rate band drops by that amount: €44,000 → €28,452.
- Your tax credits drop by 20% of it (whole euro): €4,000 − €3,109 = €891.
- With no employer pay during leave there is nothing to deduct the benefit's tax from each week. Revenue collects any income tax due separately — for example through an adjusted tax credit certificate or the end-of-year review. That later collection sits outside this timeline: every week above, including the normal weeks after your leave, shows the cash for that week at its own payroll numbers.
Assumptions and notes
- PRSI qualification is assumed. This calculator assumes you meet the PRSI contribution conditions for Maternity Benefit (broadly: enough recent PRSI-insurable weeks — the exact conditions are on the official Maternity Benefit page). Those conditions look at contributions you already made — they are separate from any €0.00 PRSI weeks you may see in the table below (see the PRSI note).
- Weeks marked † start after 31/12/2026 and are priced at 2026 rates — the 2027 rates apply once Budget 2027 is published.
- Figures use your band and credits from the Advanced section (defaults: single person) and assume PRSI Class A employment, standard USC bands (no age-related reduced rates, no full-medical-card rate) and no pension contribution. Each week is priced as if annualised, the same frame payroll software uses for a week-1 basis; a cumulative payroll can smooth cents differently.
- The income tax due on the benefit itself (if any) is not shown as a weekly deduction anywhere in this timeline — Revenue collects it separately. See “How the benefit is taxed” above.
- One parent, one timeline: combining both parents' leave (or splitting Parent's Benefit blocks between parents) is outside this version.
Estimates only — not professional advice.
How this calculator works
The State benefit is a flat 2026 rate per week for a statutory number of weeks per leave type (Maternity Benefit: 26 weeks / Paternity Benefit: 2 weeks / Parent's Benefit: 9 weeks) . The benefit is liable to income tax but not USC or PRSI. Revenue collects that income tax through your payroll numbers: the weekly benefit is annualised (× 52), your standard-rate band drops by that amount, and your tax credits drop by 20% of it — so any employer top-up is taxed through squeezed numbers while the benefit itself arrives untouched. This calculator prices every week of your leave (and the normal weeks around it) with that mechanism, using PRSI Class A rates for the week's actual date — including the 2026 mid-year PRSI change. Every rate is read from a versioned data file assembled from the official publications below, and the engine must reproduce Revenue's published worked examples in its test suite before any deploy.
Sources
Key official sources for the figures on this page — the Sources page lists every statutory value with its effective and retrieval dates.