# Annual Leave Entitlement Ireland 2026 — All Three Methods

Source page: https://valem.run/calculators/ireland/holiday-entitlement

Irish law does not have one annual-leave formula. Section 19 of the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 gives three, and the employee is entitled to whichever produces the greater period: 4 working weeks once you pass 1,365 hours in the leave year, one-third of a working week for every month you work at least 117 hours, or 8% of the hours you worked, capped at 4 working weeks. A full-year five-day employee gets 20 days.

**Tax year:** 2026

## How it is calculated

Section 19(1) sets out three methods and then settles between them in one sentence: *"Provided that if more than one of the preceding paragraphs is applicable in the case concerned and the period of annual leave of the employee, determined in accordance with each of those paragraphs, is not identical, the annual leave to which the employee shall be entitled shall be equal to whichever of those periods is the greater."* So this page computes all three and shows you which one won — the only page in this family whose answer is not a single formula.

**"Four working weeks" is not a number of days.** s.19(6): *"References in this section to a working week shall be construed as references to the number of days that the employee concerned usually works in a week."* Four working weeks is therefore 20 days on a five-day week and 12 on a three-day one, which is why every figure here is expressed in your own days rather than in the statute’s.

**Which method wins is not obvious, and for part-timers it is usually method (c).** Someone working three days a week at 24 hours fails *both* hour thresholds — 1,248 hours a year is under 1,365, and 104 hours a month is under 117 — so methods (a) and (b) give them nothing at all, and the 8% route is the only one that pays. It gives 12 days, the same four working weeks, which is exactly what the proviso is there to guarantee. Run the other way, a full-time employee who leaves after eleven months has still passed 1,365 hours, and method (a) is flat — so they take the whole four weeks rather than eleven-twelfths of it.

**One parenthetical does real work.** Method (a) applies *"(unless it is a leave year in which he or she changes employment)"*, so changing job removes the flat route and leaves the two accrual ones. The checkbox is that clause, not an assumption. The leave year itself runs from 1 April — s.2(1): *"“ leave year ” means a year beginning on any 1st day of April"*. The Workplace Relations Commission, which enforces the Act, states the same three methods and the same greater-of rule, and adds the ceiling: *"the maximum statutory annual leave entitlement of an employee in a leave year is four of his/her normal working weeks."*

## Worked example

With Days you usually work per week of 5, this model computes Days Entitled of 20.

## Inputs

| Name | Label | Type |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `daysPerWeek` | Days you usually work per week | number |
| `hoursPerWeek` | Hours you usually work per week | number |
| `monthsWorked` | Months worked in the leave year (0–12) | number |
| `changedEmployment` | I changed employment during this leave year | boolean |
| `daysTaken` | Days already taken | number |

## Sources

- [Organisation of Working Time Act 1997, s.19 — revised (the three methods, their thresholds, the greater-of proviso, and what a working week is)](https://revisedacts.lawreform.ie/eli/1997/act/20/section/19/revised/en/html) (checked 2026-10-11)
- [Workplace Relations Commission — Annual Leave (the same three methods, the greater-of rule, and the four-working-week ceiling)](https://www.workplacerelations.ie/en/what_you_should_know/leave/annual-leave/) (checked 2026-10-11)
- [Organisation of Working Time Act 1997, s.2(1) — revised (“leave year” begins on a 1st day of April)](https://revisedacts.lawreform.ie/eli/1997/act/20/section/2/revised/en/html) (checked 2026-10-11)

## What this page claims

The Valem engine reproduces this model's formula through 10 self-test cases. That shows internal consistency, not that the formula matches current law; the cited sources are the evidence for that. Estimate, not tax advice.

## For agents

- Model manifest (formula, constants, test vectors): https://valem.run/calculators/ireland/holiday-entitlement.json
- Compute by URL: https://valem.run/calculators/ireland/holiday-entitlement.json?daysPerWeek=5
- MCP: https://valem.run/mcp/calculators (call `calculate` with calculator `ireland/holiday-entitlement`)