Maternity leave for teachers in Ireland (2026): the pay, the order, and the fourth layer

Republic of Ireland · About an 8-minute read · Facts checked 22 September 2026

This page is about registered teachers in recognised primary and post-primary schools. The rules are in Chapter 2 of Department of Education Circular 0054/2019, the Maternity Leave Scheme, with two Information Notes amending it since. Special needs assistants have their own separate circular, so if that is you, the pointer is at the end rather than in the middle of somebody else's rules.

The statutory floor is the same as for any employee: the Maternity Protection Acts give the leave and the Department of Social Protection decides the payment. Our general maternity leave guide covers that floor. Everything below is what the teaching scheme adds.

The short version

The leave: 26 weeks paid, then up to 16 weeks statutory unpaid, in that order
The fourth layer: Non-statutory unpaid leave to 31 August, if your employer sanctions it
Your pay: You stay on salary, and a deduction equal to the maximum weekly Maternity Benefit is applied
Class D PRSI: No Maternity Benefit, and you stay on your ordinary salary
School closures: Counted inside the leave. A week is 7 consecutive days
Notice: 6 weeks to your employer, not the statutory 4, on the form in the circular
The MB1: Goes to the Department of Social Protection, never to the Department of Education

Four layers, and the order is not optional

The scheme sets out the sequence the leave must be taken in, and it is worth seeing as a single ladder rather than as options:

Statutory Maternity Leave, 26 weeks, paid.
Extended Statutory Maternity Leave for premature birth, where applicable.
Statutory additional unpaid Maternity Leave, up to a maximum of 16 weeks.
Non-statutory additional unpaid Maternity Leave, until the end of the school year.

The fourth one is the layer that does not exist outside the scheme. A teacher who has used the 26 paid weeks and the 16 statutory unpaid weeks may apply for non-statutory additional unpaid Maternity Leave until the end of the school year, that is 31 August. It is not an entitlement: it is subject to written sanction from the employer, at least 6 weeks in advance of the date you intend to start it.

When every layer you are taking is exhausted, the scheme is blunt about what happens next: the next working day becomes your date of resumption of duties.

The pay: you stay on salary, and the Benefit comes off it

This is the part that is genuinely different from most private-sector arrangements, where the employer typically has the Maternity Benefit paid to them instead of to you.

The scheme starts by saying plainly that "Continuation of salary during Maternity Leave is not a statutory entitlement", and then sets out what happens in practice, which depends on your PRSI class:

Full rate, Class A. Any Maternity Benefit payable issues directly to you, and a deduction from salary equivalent to the maximum weekly rate of Maternity Benefit is applied by the Paymaster. So the money arrives in two pieces, and the second piece is smaller than your usual payslip by roughly the size of the first.
Modified rate, Class D. No entitlement to Maternity Benefit, and you remain on your ordinary salary.

Two practical consequences fall out of that, and both are on you to act on. If the Benefit payable to you is less than the maximum, or you are not entitled to any, the scheme says to notify the Paymaster immediately so that you can remain on the appropriate salary, and a change to the automatic deduction needs a copy of the Department of Social Protection's written notification of your entitlement. And the deductions are made fortnightly during the statutory paid leave, up to a maximum of 26 weeks.

Get the absence recorded on time. The scheme requires your employer to notify the leave on the OLCS, or the relevant Education and Training Board system, not later than 6 weeks before it starts. It also says what happens when that is done late: arrears arise. Nobody chases this on your behalf, and it is the one item in the whole process that is your employer's job rather than yours, which is exactly why it is worth asking whether it has been done.

The layer that counts for nothing

The scheme grades the layers by what they are worth to your record, and the three answers are not the same. A teacher absent on any of them is deemed to have been in employment at the time, but after that they part company:

Paid Maternity Leave, including the extension for a premature birth, is reckonable for seniority and for progression on the incremental salary scale.
Statutory additional unpaid Maternity Leave is reckonable for all purposes except superannuation and remuneration.
Non-statutory additional unpaid Maternity Leave is not reckonable for any purpose, including accrual of annual leave.

That third line is the one to read twice before applying for the fourth layer. It is the longest and most flexible-looking piece of leave in the scheme, it takes you to the end of the school year, and it is the only one that buys you nothing at all: not the increment, not seniority, not annual leave. That is not an argument against taking it. It is an argument for knowing the price before you ask, because the decision looks free and is not.

School closures are inside the leave, not added to it

This is the question every teacher asks and almost nobody finds answered, because the answer is not in the maternity chapter at all. It is in the way the circular defines a week, and it uses the same definition across its leave schemes:

"A week consists of 7 consecutive days including weekends, school closures and days on which a teacher is not timetabled for attendance within that period."

So a midterm, Christmas, Easter or the summer holidays fall within your leave and are counted by it. Leave that runs across July and August is spending those weeks, not pausing for them, and it does not come back at the other end.

That is also what makes the 31 August boundary on the fourth layer coherent rather than arbitrary: the scheme is counting continuous weeks, and the school year is the frame it counts them in.

Work out your layers and your deadlines

Put in the date your maternity leave starts. This works out where each layer ends, whether the fourth layer is available to you at all, and the three separate deadlines that run 6 weeks ahead of something. It stays on your device.

This applies the published sequence and the circular's definition of a week to the date you type, on your device. It is not a decision, it does not apply for anything, and it cannot account for a premature birth extension or a postponement. Your leave is granted by your employer under the Department's scheme; Maternity Benefit is decided by the Department of Social Protection. Confirm your own dates against Chapter 2 of Circular 0054/2019.

The paperwork, and the form that must not go to the Department of Education

There are three pieces of paper and they go to three different places. Getting that wrong is the most common way this goes slowly.

To your employer, at least 6 weeks before you start: the application for all types of Maternity Leave, paid and unpaid, on the Application Form at Appendix A of the chapter. Note that this is 6 weeks and not the statutory 4 that an ordinary employee owes an ordinary employer.
To the Department of Social Protection, at least 6 weeks before you start: the MB1, which you send yourself. The scheme says in capitals that the MB1 should not be sent to the Department of Education. Alternatively you can apply online through MyWelfare, and for that route your employer has to have completed the MB2 first.
Your employer to the Department of Education or the ETB, not later than 6 weeks before: the absence recorded on the OLCS or the relevant ETB system.

And a fourth, if you are going for the last layer: the written sanction for non-statutory additional unpaid leave, again at least 6 weeks in advance.

PRSI credits for the unpaid weeks

A teacher who takes the statutory additional unpaid Maternity Leave may be entitled to PRSI credits for it, and the form is the SW1 application for Maternity Leave credits, available from the Department of Social Protection. It has to be completed by both you and your employer and returned to that department.

Nobody sends it to you. The same trap applies outside teaching, which is why it has its own guide, and the credit matters later rather than now: it protects the contribution record that decides a future Maternity Benefit claim, among other things.

Time off for appointments and classes, the teacher version

The scheme sets out the paid time off a pregnant teacher is entitled to, and it is slightly more specific than the general wording:

medical appointments related to ante-natal care,
one full set of ante-natal classes in a working career, and the last 3 classes in a set for subsequent pregnancies,
medical appointments related to post-natal care within 14 weeks of the birth.

If you miss particular classes in a set, the scheme permits you to attend the equivalent classes during a later pregnancy. An expectant father who is a teacher is entitled to paid time off for the last 2 ante-natal classes in the set attended by the mother immediately before the birth. The general rules behind all of this, including the notice, are in our guide to paid time off for antenatal appointments.

What you cannot do while you are off

One line in the scheme, and it is broader than people expect: a teacher absent on Maternity Leave may not engage in any type of teaching or other paid employment. The scheme adds that under the social welfare rules Maternity Benefit may be terminated if you do, and that the Paymaster will review your salary payment if the Benefit is terminated for not complying with the Benefit scheme's terms.

So grinds, examining, supervision work and any other paid work sit outside what the leave allows, and the consequence is not only the Benefit.

Two things the circular no longer says

The circular is from 2019 and is still the live document, but two paragraphs of it have been amended since by Information Notes that are published separately. If you read only the PDF you will miss both.

Postponement for a serious health condition. Since 20 November 2024 a teacher can choose to postpone all or part of the statutory 26-week entitlement, for a minimum of 5 weeks and a maximum of 52, where they meet the definition of a serious health condition: one that entails a serious risk to life or health, including mental health, and that requires ongoing necessary medical intervention, with inpatient hospital treatment being the definition used for mental health. It has to be certified, and the terms of the Sick Leave Scheme apply during the postponement. That is Information Note TC/IN 0001/2025.

The paragraph on loss. The circular's paragraph on stillbirth was amended with effect from 16 September 2024 by Information Note TC/IN 0010/2024, which widens it and changes the threshold printed in the PDF. If this is your situation, read the Note rather than the circular, and take the exact wording from the Note. We have deliberately not paraphrased its numbers here, because this is the last paragraph on this site that should be approximated. There is gentler and more useful signposting on our support after a loss page.

Who decides what

Your employer, the board of management or the ETB, grants the leave and sanctions the non-statutory layer. The Department of Education owns the scheme and the circular, and its Teacher and SNA Terms and Conditions Section in Athlone is who the school asks when the scheme is unclear. The Department of Social Protection decides Maternity Benefit, and nothing about your PRSI class, your Benefit rate or your credits is decided by your school. A dispute about a maternity right in employment is heard by the Workplace Relations Commission, within 6 months of the dispute, extendable by up to a further 6 months for reasonable cause.

If you are a special needs assistant, these are not your rules. SNAs are covered by a separate circular, 0017/2013, with its own amending Information Notes, and the structure is not identical. The gov.ie service page linked in the sources lists the SNA documents alongside the teacher ones, and that is the right place to start rather than this page.

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Official sources

gov.ie, Department of Education: Maternity leave for teachers and special needs assistants (SNAs) (the index to every document below, and the SNA equivalents)
Department of Education: Circular 0054/2019, Leave Schemes for Registered Teachers (PDF. Chapter 2 is the Maternity Leave Scheme, from page 45, with the application form at page 57)
Department of Education: Information Note TC/IN 0010/2024 (PDF. Amends the paragraph on stillbirth, with effect from 16 September 2024)
Department of Education: Information Note TC/IN 0001/2025 (PDF. Postponement of maternity leave for a serious health condition, from 20 November 2024)
Citizens Information: Maternity leave (the statutory floor, and making a complaint to the WRC)

Facts checked against the gov.ie service page and Chapter 2 of Circular 0054/2019 with its two amending Information Notes on 22 September 2026. This is general information, not legal or employment advice, and it does not replace the circular: where this page and the circular differ, the circular governs. Your employer grants the leave, the Department of Education owns the scheme, and the Department of Social Protection decides Maternity Benefit and PRSI credits. This page covers registered teachers in recognised primary and post-primary schools only. Rules can change; always confirm on the official documents linked above.