Employer not paying your wages: the steps, the six months and what the WRC can award

An employer who does not pay your wages on the day they are due is in breach of the Payment of Wages Act 1991, whatever the reason given. The Act treats wages properly payable and not paid as a deduction, which means the same rules and the same Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) route apply whether your pay was short, late or missing altogether. This guide sets out the steps in order, explains why each pay day is its own contravention with its own six months, says what the WRC can and cannot award, and covers the case where the employer has run out of money.

If you are also being asked to accept deductions you do not understand, the payslips and deductions guide covers those. If pay has slipped below the legal floor, the minimum wage guide shows how to check.

What counts as wages

Wages under the Act are pay for work: basic pay, overtime, shift and Sunday premiums, commission and bonus where your contract makes them payable, holiday pay, and sick pay, including statutory sick pay. On leaving, wages include your final pay, pay for annual leave accrued and not taken, pay for a public holiday falling within a week of leaving, and, where you were dismissed without the notice the Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Acts 1973 to 2005 require, the notice pay.

Expenses, benefits in kind, employer pension contributions and a redundancy lump sum are not wages for this purpose. They may be owed, but they are claimed under other Acts or in other forums.

Step one: ask in writing

Before the WRC, write to the employer. Not because the Act requires it, but because an adjudicator will ask whether you did, because a written demand often works, and because the reply tells you what the employer's position is going to be.

The letter should be short and factual:

• The pay days on which you were not paid, or were underpaid, and the amount for each.
• The total, and how you worked it out: hours, rate, holiday pay accrued.
• A date by which you expect payment, a week or two away.
• A line saying that if it is not paid you will refer the matter to the WRC.

Send it by email so that the date is recorded, and keep the reply. The letter builder produces this letter from your dates and figures. Do not resign in the letter, do not threaten anything other than the WRC, and do not accept a promise of payment "next month" as a reason to wait past a deadline.

Step two: count the six months, pay day by pay day

The six-month limit under the Workplace Relations Act 2015 runs from the date of the contravention. For unpaid wages, that is each pay day on which the money should have been paid and was not. There is no single clock. If you were underpaid on twelve consecutive fortnightly pay days, you have twelve contraventions, each with its own six months, and the oldest one drops out of reach every fortnight you wait.

A complaint lodged today reaches back six months of pay days, or twelve where you show reasonable cause for the delay, and never further. An adjudicator cannot award for pay days outside the limit however clearly the money is owed. That is why the advice in every pay guide on this site is the same: lodge now, include every pay day inside the limit, and add later pay days as they fall due. The time limit guide explains the counting, and what reasonable cause has and has not meant.

Talks with the employer, an internal grievance or a promise to pay do not pause the clock. Lodging does not stop you continuing to talk, and a complaint can be withdrawn at any time if you are paid.

Step three: lodge the WRC complaint

The WRC's online complaint form is free. Tick the Payment of Wages Act 1991. If notice pay is owed, tick the Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Acts as well; if holiday pay or public holiday pay is owed, the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 is the alternative basis and many people tick both so the adjudicator can decide which fits. If your pay fell below the minimum wage, add the National Minimum Wage Act 2000.

The form asks for a short description, not a submission. List the pay days and the amounts, say what you asked for and what the employer replied, and attach the payslips and your letter if you can. You can send more later.

What happens next is set out in the hearing guide: an acknowledgement, a copy to the employer, an offer of mediation, and a hearing date some months away. In 2025 the WRC received 10,559 applications, up 44% on the year before, and pay complaints were the largest category at 26% of the 19,068 complaints lodged. The median wait to a first hearing was 133 days in January 2025 and 174 by December. Many pay complaints settle before the hearing once the employer sees the figures, and the mediation guide explains that route.

What the WRC can award

An adjudicator who finds a Payment of Wages Act complaint well founded directs the employer to pay you compensation, which in a wages case is the net amount of the wages that were not paid, inside the limits the Act sets, for every pay day inside the time limit. Under the Minimum Notice Acts the award is the pay you would have received for the notice period you were not given. Under the Organisation of Working Time Act the adjudicator can order the holiday pay to be paid and can add compensation for the breach.

What the WRC cannot do is award interest in the ordinary sense, award your legal costs, or punish the employer. Nor can it reach pay days outside the six months, or twelve with reasonable cause. The decisions guide and the awards register show what decided wages cases have looked like.

If the employer does not pay the award

A WRC decision that is not appealed within 42 days is final. If the employer still does not pay, the decision is enforced through the District Court, which can order compliance and treat the sum as a judgment debt, opening the ordinary routes for recovering a debt. The WRC does not collect the money and does not chase the employer on your behalf; the application to the District Court is yours to make, and a union or a solicitor would usually handle it.

The employer in difficulty

Late wages are often the first sign that a business is failing, and the steps above do not change, but two things are worth knowing.

If the employer becomes formally insolvent, through liquidation, receivership or bankruptcy, the Insolvency Payments Scheme pays arrears of wages, holiday pay, notice pay and certain unpaid pension contributions from the Social Insurance Fund, within limits on the number of weeks and the weekly amount that the Department of Social Protection publishes. The application is made through the liquidator or receiver, who certifies what is owed. A WRC decision in your favour makes the figures easier to establish. The statutory redundancy payment, where you are made redundant, is paid separately from the same fund where the employer cannot pay. The Insolvency Payments Scheme guide covers the limits and the forms.

If the business has simply stopped, with the doors shut and no liquidator appointed, the Scheme is not yet available because there is no formal insolvency. A WRC complaint can still be lodged against the company, and a decision can still be enforced against its assets, but recovery depends on there being any. This is a situation where a solicitor's advice early is worth the cost, because the choice between waiting for a liquidation and pursuing the company directly turns on facts you cannot see from outside.

Keep working, or not? Being unpaid does not oblige you to keep working, but resigning in anger can cost you notice pay and complicate any later claim. If you are considering leaving because of non-payment, write first, lodge the complaint, and take advice before you resign. A resignation forced by the employer's conduct can in some cases be treated as a constructive dismissal, but the burden of showing that is on you and the WRC expects the internal route to have been tried.

"Can my employer withhold my pay?"

The question comes up in four forms, and the answer in each is the same: withholding wages is a deduction, and a deduction needs one of the four lawful bases in the Payment of Wages Act. Those are a legal requirement, a contractual term that is fair and reasonable, your prior written consent, and recovery of an overpayment or payment for goods or services the employer supplied.

• Holding final pay until equipment is returned: not one of the four, and may be unlawful.
• Holding pay because you left without notice: the employer may have a separate claim for its loss, but may not settle it from your wages.
• Holding pay as a disciplinary penalty: needs the contract, the fairness test and a week's written notice, and even then is tested for reasonableness.
• Paying late because of cash flow: pay not paid on the day it is properly payable is a deduction on that day.

Whether a particular withholding is lawful turns on the contract and the facts, which is what the adjudicator decides. The payslips and deductions guide works through each lawful basis in more detail.

The WRC inspection route

Alongside a complaint in your own name, you can report an employer to the WRC's inspection service. Inspectors can require an employer to produce records, can direct arrears to be paid and can prosecute. An inspection does not give you an enforceable decision of your own and you have less control over the outcome, but it suits workers who want the matter examined without a hearing, and a group of workers in the same workplace are often better served by an inspection than by a dozen separate complaints.

Where this leaves you

Put each unpaid pay day into the WRC deadline checker and it tells you which are still inside the six months, which need reasonable cause, and the last day to lodge for each. Then write the letter, lodge the complaint, and keep the list growing as pay days pass.

If you are in a union, ring them first: unpaid wages are the bread and butter of union work and an official can often get the money paid without a hearing. How unions work. If the sums are large, the employer is failing, or your leaving is tangled up with the non-payment, a solicitor can tell you in one conversation which route to take, with the costs in writing before anything else.