Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 27 January 2026
220. Deputy Matt Carthy asked the Taoiseach the number of those under the age of 16 years-of-age in employment; the number of those aged 16 and 17 years-of-age, in each of the past ten years, in tabular form, in the workforce. [5922/26]
View answerPQ referred to CSO for answer
The exact information requested by the Deputy is not available.
The Labour Force Survey (LFS) is the official source of estimates of employment in the State. The most recent figures available are for Q3 2025. The tables for this response use Q3 as the reference period for the year.
The LFS under EU regulation follows international guidelines for the methodology and sample size of the survey. Employment related questions are asked only to respondents aged 15 years or older therefore, it is not possible to produce reliable estimates for those aged under 16 years-of-age from the LFS. The number of people aged 15 – 17 years in employment was 44,800 in Q3 2025 this is up from 20,100 in Q3 2016.
While the information from those under 16 years-of-age is not provided by the LFS there is supplementary information available from Revenue’s administrative PAYE data which provides insight on employments by age on an annual basis.
Earnings Analysis using Administrative Data Sources (EAADS) outputs contain employment figures for those aged under 16 years-of-age. It should be noted that EAADS estimates are for employees only, and do not include persons who are self-employed. Please also note that the estimate provided by EAADS relate to the number of employments, rather than number of employees. The annual employment estimates from the EAADS dataset are restricted to employments which were active during the month of October, in line with Eurostat requirements relating to Structure of Earnings Statistics. The EAADS time series begins in 2011 and the most recent figures available are for 2024.
In 2024, there were 1,072 employments under the age of 16 years, up from 772 employments in 2016. There were a further 30,121 employments aged 16 and 17 years-of-age.
Table 1 shows the total number of persons aged 15-17 years in employment (ILO). LFS, Q3 2016 – Q3 2025.
Table 1: Number of persons in employment (ILO) aged 15-17, Q3 2016 - Q3 2025
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'000 |
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Employment |
Q3 2016 |
Q3 2017 |
Q3 2018 |
Q3 2019 |
Q3 2020 |
Q3 2021 |
Q3 2022 |
Q3 2023 |
Q3 2024 |
Q3 2025 |
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Aged 15 to 17 years |
20.1 |
17.1 |
21.4 |
22.1 |
16.2 |
42.9 |
36.4 |
40.7 |
43.9 |
44.8 |
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Source: Labour Force Survey (LFS), Central Statistics Office, Ireland. |
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Data may be subject to sampling or other survey errors, which are greater in respect of smaller values or estimates of change. |
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Reference period: Q3 Jul-Sep |
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Table 2 shows the number of employments under the age of 16 and those 16 & 17 years from EAADS, 2016 – 2024.
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Table 2: Number of PAYE employments among those aged under 16 years and those aged 16 & 17 years from administrative data, 2016 - 2024 |
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Employments |
2016 |
2017 |
2018 |
2019 |
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
2023 |
2024 |
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Aged under 16 years |
772 |
763 |
1,041 |
868 |
728 |
1,188 |
1,185 |
1,087 |
1,072 |
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Aged 16 & 17 years |
13,840 |
15,021 |
18,601 |
19,429 |
13,487 |
26,839 |
31,567 |
30,669 |
30,121 |
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Source: CSO, Earnings Analysis using Administrative Data Sources (EAADS) |
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