This question gets asked constantly and answered badly, because three separate pots of money get treated as one: the payment from the Department of Social Protection, any top-up your employer chose to add, and the leave you built up while you were off. They follow different rules and only one of them is ever repayable.
There is also a second trap. Maternity Benefit and Parent's Benefit look alike, pay the same weekly amount, and behave completely differently when you leave a job.
The short version
- Can you resign while on leave
- Yes. You stay an employee throughout, so the normal rules apply
- Notice you owe
- One week after 13 weeks' service, unless your contract says more
- Maternity Benefit
- Yours. The insurable employment test is set at the first day of your leave
- Employer top-up
- The only repayable part, and only if your contract says so
- Parent's Benefit
- Different. It is conditional on being on parent's leave from a job
- Annual leave
- Keeps building while you are off, and is paid out when you go
You are still an employee the whole time
This is the foundation for everything below. Under the Maternity Protection Act 1994, someone on maternity leave "shall be deemed to have been in the employment of the employer and, accordingly, while so absent the employee shall... be treated as if she or he had not been so absent", and the absence "shall not affect any right" other than the right to be paid during it.
The same protection is extended to the additional unpaid maternity leave that can follow, this time also excluding superannuation and contributions.
So you are not in some suspended state that has to end before you can act. You can resign from leave, in writing, without going back to the workplace to do it.
The notice you owe, and the table everyone quotes backwards
The Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Act 1973 says an employer "shall... be entitled to not less than one week's notice from an employee who has been in his continuous employment for thirteen weeks or more".
One week. That is the statutory floor for you, whether you have been there two years or twenty.
The sliding scale is not yours. You will often see a table quoted at people in this situation: one week up to two years, two weeks to five years, four weeks to ten, six weeks to fifteen, eight weeks beyond. That is section 4 of the same Act, and it runs the other way. It is the notice your employer must give you before dismissing you. Quoting it at yourself only makes you serve longer than you need to.
Your contract can require more than one week from you, and if it does, that is the figure that binds you. It cannot require less: a contract term below the statutory minimum has no effect. Your notice period can run while you are still on leave, so the employment can end without you returning.
Maternity Benefit is not your employer's money
Maternity Benefit is a payment made to women who are on maternity leave from work and covered by social insurance. It comes from the Department, out of your own PRSI record, and it is paid directly into your bank account. Your employer does not fund it and cannot ask for it back.
The employment condition is set at a single point in time. You must have the contributions and be in insurable employment up to the first day of your maternity leave. That test is passed or failed before your leave begins.
What the official guidance does list as ending the payment is the opposite of what people fear: payment stops if you engage in insurable paid employment or self-employment. Voluntary work and courses of education are fine. In other words, the thing that ends Maternity Benefit is starting paid work, not leaving a job.
There is even an explicit provision for employment ending around this time: if your contract of employment ends within 16 weeks of the end of the week your baby was due, Maternity Benefit is paid from the day after your employment ends, provided you meet the PRSI conditions and your employer completes form MB2.
Tell the Maternity Benefit Section what has changed regardless. They hold your claim and they are the ones who decide it.
The order matters far more than the amount. Because the test is in insurable employment up to the first day of your maternity leave, resigning during your leave and resigning before it starts are not variations of the same decision. Leaving after the leave has begun is the situation this whole page describes. Ending the employment first can mean there is no insurable employment on the day the test is applied, and the risk there is not repaying a top-up, it is the 26 weeks of Maternity Benefit itself. Being on certified sick leave is still being in employment. If you already know you will not go back, the safe sequence is to start the leave, then resign from it.
The top-up is the only part that can be repayable
Many employers pay your normal salary through maternity leave. The way that is usually arranged is that the employer keeps you on the payroll and has the Maternity Benefit paid to them instead of to you. The official guidance is blunt about where the rules for this live: some employers continue to pay you and request that your Maternity Benefit be paid to them, and you should check your contract of employment to see what applies to you.
That difference between your salary and the state payment is the top-up. It is not a statutory entitlement, it is something your employer agreed to, and the conditions attached to it are contract terms. A clause requiring you to return for a set period, or to repay the top-up if you do not, is a common one.
Read the maternity section of your contract or staff handbook before you write anything. You are looking for one thing: whether the enhanced or topped-up pay is conditional on returning to work, and for how long. If there is no such clause, there is nothing to repay. If there is, it tells you the amount and the date, and both are usually negotiable in a way people assume they are not.
Parent's Benefit does not work the same way
This is the part that catches people, and it caught the original question that prompted this guide. People say "my nine weeks of paid parental leave", which mixes up two different things. Parental leave in Ireland is unpaid. The nine paid weeks are parent's leave, and the payment during them is Parent's Benefit.
Parent's Benefit is not assessed once at the start and then left alone. The rule is stated directly: "You must be on parent's leave to get Parent's Benefit", and "If you decide not to take parent's leave, you cannot get Parent's Benefit". An employee has to be approved for the leave by their employer before applying, and the Department may contact the employer to confirm the dates.
Parent's leave is leave from an employment. If the employment ends, the leave it was granted from ends with it. The guidance also puts an active duty on you: tell the Parent's Benefit section about any changes to your parent's leave arrangements.
So the practical order matters here in a way it does not for Maternity Benefit. If you are partway through nine weeks of Parent's Benefit and you are planning to leave, ask the Parent's Benefit section what your resignation date does to the remaining weeks before you set that date. They decide, and it is a phone call.
What you are owed on the way out
Annual leave keeps accruing while you are on maternity leave. It has to: the Act preserves every right except the right to be paid, and annual leave is a right, not pay. The same Act closes the obvious loophole from the other side, stating that a period of protective leave "shall not be treated as part of any other leave (including sick leave or annual leave)". Your maternity leave cannot be quietly counted as your holidays.
When the employment ends with that leave untaken, the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 requires that you be paid for it: as compensation for the loss of that annual leave the employee "shall... be paid by his or her employer an amount equal to the pay" for it. If your employment ends in the week before a public holiday and you have four weeks' service behind you, an extra day is owed on top.
This is money that is routinely left behind, because it does not appear on a payslip until someone asks for it. Put it in the resignation letter.
A sensible order to do this in
- If your leave has not started yet, do not resign first. Start the leave, then resign from it. This one step protects the largest sum involved.
- Find the clause. The maternity or enhanced pay section of your contract decides whether any of this costs you anything. Everything else follows from what it says.
- If you are on Parent's Benefit, ring the Department before choosing a date. The remaining weeks depend on it.
- Count your notice honestly. One week unless your contract says more. Not the sliding scale.
- Resign in writing, stating your last day, and ask in the same letter for payment of accrued annual leave and any public holiday entitlement.
- Tell the Department. Maternity Benefit Section or Parent's Benefit Section, whichever is paying you. Changes to your circumstances are for them to assess, not for you to guess at.
Who decides
The Department of Social Protection decides everything about the benefit: whether it continues, from when, and at what rate. Both schemes are administered from Buncrana, on 0818 300600, at maternityben@welfare.ie and parentsben@welfare.ie. If you disagree with a decision, you have 60 days to appeal to the Social Welfare Appeals Office.
Anything to do with the contract, the notice or the top-up is an employment matter, and the Workplace Relations Commission is the body that hears those. Neither this page nor a comment thread can settle what your particular contract says.
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Official sources
- Citizens Information: Maternity Benefit
- Citizens Information: Parent's Benefit
- Law Reform Commission, revised Acts: Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Act 1973, section 6 (notice an employee must give)
- Law Reform Commission, revised Acts: Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Act 1973, section 4 (notice an employer must give)
- Law Reform Commission, revised Acts: Maternity Protection Act 1994, section 22 (rights preserved during protective leave)
- Law Reform Commission, revised Acts: Organisation of Working Time Act 1997, section 23 (untaken annual leave on cesser)
Facts checked against the official pages and the revised text of the Acts on 10 August 2026. This is general information, not legal, employment or financial advice, and it cannot tell you what your own contract says. The Department of Social Protection decides your entitlement to Maternity Benefit and Parent's Benefit. Rules can change; always confirm on the official pages linked above.