Pay Transparency Laws Are Spreading: What Ireland's Public Pay Gap Reports Show and How to Use the Numbers to Get Paid and Promoted

Erica Anderson Rooney is an ex-CPO turned executive coach and AI educator on a mission to get more women into positions of power and keep them there. She is the author of The AI Gap (2026), host of the Glass Ceilings & Sticky Floors and AI Voice or Victim podcasts, and NC Chapter Lead for Women Applying AI. Her SNAP and AI Continuum frameworks are taught to thousands of women through CHIEF, WICT, and Fortune 500 leadership programs. She is the sought-after speaker at the intersection of women, AI, and leadership.

Ireland just put real life company pay gaps on a government website where anyone can look them up. We are talking your neighbor can look them up. A recruiter or most importantly, the woman deciding whether or not to take the offer. Pay transparency laws have been creeping toward this moment for years, and on October 21, 2026, The Irish Times showed us what it looks like when the numbers finally go public. Y’all, I could not be more ecstatic.

I spent more than 15 years in HR, all the way up to Chief People Officer. I have seen the spreadsheets that never leave the building, and most never know it exists. And I know exactly how it feels to sit across the table from the person who knows the number, while you are just guessing.

When I was accepting my first executive position in HR, at a new company, I had no idea what the “right” salary ask should be. (And let's be clear, I know how to do my research.) The industry was tech. The company was relatively small. It was PE backed. It was my first executive position. I did all my research, and I desperately wanted to negotiate with a number that I was confident in, that was commensurate with the rest of the executive team's pay, and I was worried I would undersell myself. Of course, I was also worried I would ask too much.

I remember stating my ask, and I had the courage to say to the hiring leader (the CEO), “This is my ask, but if it is not in line with what your company makes, as in, I’m asking too little, just know that as an HR member, I’ll have full visibility to the pay grades, and I will know if I’m under paid.”

Let’s be clear, that is said from a position of privilege. Not many people inside the organizations have that kind of visibility, or reality. Most people never know what the pay discrepancies are. Because we don’t require companies to disclose pay ranges in all states.

So when I read this story, I saw a preview of what is coming for every woman reading this, wherever she works.

What Ireland Just Did

Here are the facts. In Ireland, every employer with more than 50 employees has to publish its gender pay gap, and this year the government's Gender Pay Gap Portal is where those reports live. (I thought, “Dang! They have a whole portal for this???”) The Irish Times reported that roughly 1,000 employers have already set up accounts and 410 reports for 2025 were posted voluntarily. The deadline for this year's numbers is the end of November.

Ireland's Minister for Equality, Norma Foley, has said the Employment Equality Bill 2026 will be enacted "in the coming weeks." Ireland is also still working through the rest of the EU Pay Transparency Directive, which will add gender-neutral job evaluation on top.

The national picture is a gap of 8.3%, according to figures the Department of Equality cited this year. That is the average difference between what all men and all women earn across the whole workforce. Then it climbs with age. For workers aged 50 to 59, the gap is 16.7%.

Say what? Roughly double, right when women should be at the peak of their earning years.

The Pay Gap Is a Promotion Gap, and the Reports Prove It

Here is the stat I wanted to share, because it tells you where the money goes.

Meta Platforms Ireland reported a 26.5% gender pay gap for 2025 and a 37% bonus gap. Women make up 62% of its lowest pay quartile. Men make up 63% of its highest. (A quartile is just the workforce split into four groups from lowest paid to highest paid.) Meta told The Irish Times much of its gap comes from tech roles, which pay more, and from equity pay in those roles.

At KPMG in Ireland, women are 51% of the workforce and 24% of the partners. Its average pay gap for 2025 was 11.1%, with a 23.2% bonus gap. KPMG has more women than men in its three lower pay quartiles, and men outnumber women in the top one.

Look closely at those numbers, will ya? Women are in the building, often as the majority. The rooms where the bonuses, the equity and the partner checks get handed out are still mostly men.

(This one matched what I saw as a Chief People Officer almost exactly. The biggest gaps I saw lived in who got tapped for the stretch role, who got called "ready," and who was still waiting to be noticed. When it becomes a pattern, it becomes a problem.)

The pay gap is mostly a map of who gets promoted.

Michelle McDonagh of Adare, who spoke to The Irish Times, called the average gap figure "a blunt instrument" because it does not account for role, seniority or length of service. She is right, and that is exactly why it matters. A blunt number that shows women stacked at the bottom of the pay ladder is telling you something about hiring and promotion, whether a company likes the message or not.

And here is the part that made me put my green tea down. She also told the paper that 64% of employers say their biggest worry about publishing is how employees will react.

Of course they are worried!!! Once a number is public, and it is out there for the world to see, it becomes a recruiting problem, a retention problem and a reputation problem. That is the shift I want you to pay attention to.

Why a Woman in the US Should Care About an Irish Website

You might be reading this from Ohio or Texas and thinking, nice for Ireland. Stay with me, because pay transparency laws are moving in your direction too.

In the US, the Census Bureau reported in September 2026 that women working full time, year round earned 83.9% of what men earned in 2025, up from 80.6% in 2024. Progress, yes. Still a gap you can feel in your bank account every single month.

Several states now require employers to put a pay range on job postings. New York requires a compensation range for advertised jobs, promotions and transfers at employers with four or more employees, according to the New York State Department of Labor. Massachusetts started requiring pay ranges in postings at employers with 25 or more employees on October 29, 2025, and current employees there can ask for the pay range of the job they already hold, according to the Commonwealth's own guidance. The employment law firm Jackson Lewis counts more than a dozen states plus Washington, D.C. with pay range laws in effect in 2026, with Delaware's starting in 2027.

Then there is Europe. The EU Pay Transparency Directive (Directive 2023/970) gave member countries until June 7, 2026 to turn it into national law. Under the directive, employers with 250 or more workers start reporting their gender pay gap by June 7, 2027 and then every year. Workers can request, in writing, the average pay for people doing the same or equal-value work, broken down by sex. Job seekers get the starting pay or range before the interview, and employers cannot ask what you earned in your last job. If a reported gap of more than 5% cannot be explained by objective, gender-neutral reasons, the employer has to do a joint pay assessment with worker representatives, according to the Council of the European Union.

If you work for a US company with offices in Europe, your employer is building out these reports right now. Your company may be about to know a lot more about its own gap than it has ever had to share with you. And to that I say, at least they will be forced to have their own awareness.

And here is one more thing a lot of women do not know. Under the National Labor Relations Act, most private-sector employees in the US have the right to talk about their pay with coworkers, according to the National Labor Relations Board. Employers cannot punish you for it or enforce a policy that bans it.

Pay transparency laws give you new information. What you do with that information is where your pay changes.

How Do I Use Pay Transparency Laws to Get Paid Fairly?

Use the public numbers to choose employers that promote women, to set your number before you negotiate, and to ask for the promotion with facts in hand. Pay transparency laws give you pay ranges, pay gap reports and the right to ask questions. The women who benefit are the ones who use them early and often.

Here are five moves, in the order I would make them.

Move 1: Look Up the Company Before You Say Yes

If you are interviewing with a company that has employees in Ireland, search its name on the government's Gender Pay Gap Portal and read the report. If you are in the US, read the pay range on the posting, and if the job is in a state that requires one and the posting has none, ask for it in writing.

Then ask yourself one question. Where are the women in this company's pay ladder? A company with women spread through the top quartile has a track record of promoting them. A company with women piled up at the bottom is showing you your future there, too.

(Which would you rather know before you sign? I know my answer.)

Move 2: Read the Quartiles Behind the Headline Number

The headline gap gets the attention, and the quartiles show you where the women sit. Look at the share of women in the top pay band, the bonus gap and, if it is a partnership, the share of women partners.

A small headline gap with almost no women at the top can mean the company pays its junior women fairly and promotes almost none of them. A bonus gap that is far bigger than the pay gap tells you the real money is flowing somewhere women are not.

In the interview, say it plainly: "I read your gender pay gap report. What share of your top pay quartile is women, and what are you doing to move that number?" A company that has done the work will be glad you asked. A company that squirms just gave you an answer, too.

Move 3: Negotiate Your Number Early, Because the Gap Compounds

That 16.7% gap for women aged 50 to 59 did not show up overnight. It is decades of slightly smaller raises, slightly smaller bonuses and slightly slower promotions stacking up. The Irish Times pointed out where it lands: women in lower-paid roles may not be able to borrow as much for a house, and they retire with smaller pensions.

Every raise is a percentage of what you already make. So the number you accept at 28 follows you to 58. Your first offer at every job sets the floor for the next twenty years of raises.

Use the posted range. Ask for the top half of it and explain why with what you bring. If you are a current employee in a state that lets you request your own job's range, request it. You are allowed to want to know.

I went much deeper on the US side of this, including why the gap moved this year, in my post on whether the gender pay gap is getting worse.

Move 4: Ask for the Promotion, With the Data in Your Hand

If the gap is mostly a promotion gap, then the most powerful pay move you have is the promotion itself. The KPMG numbers make it painfully clear: women are more than half the firm and about a quarter of the partners.

So put your name forward. Bring your results, the scope you already carry and the problems leaders already trust you with. And if your company has published a report, you can point to it: "Our report shows women are underrepresented in the top pay quartile. I am ready to help change that number, starting with me."

That sentence is calm, factual and very hard to argue with. Receipts matter. Public receipts matter even more.

If you want more on getting your case into the room, everything we have written on promotion lives here.

Move 5: Ask Leaders the Hard Question in the Open

The 64% of Irish employers worried about employee perception are telling you something useful. Public questions move companies.

At the next town hall, all-hands or skip-level meeting, ask: "When will we publish our pay gap by quartile, and what is our plan to get more women into the top band?" Stay calm, specific and on the record.

And talk to each other. Pay secrecy protects the people who benefit from it. You are allowed to compare notes. Do it.

I loved hearing Meghan Pierce, President and CEO of the Forum of Executive Women, walk through what her own city's pay gap numbers revealed on the podcast. Listen here.

The Bigger Picture for Women at Work

For decades, the pay gap has been something companies could talk about in averages and good intentions. Public reporting changes the conversation, because now anyone can see who sits at the top.

This is where my Sticky Floors vs. Glass Ceilings framework comes in. A glass ceiling is the external, systemic barrier that keeps women from rising into leadership, and these reports show it in black and white: men holding 63% of the top pay quartile at Meta Platforms Ireland. A sticky floor is the set of limiting beliefs and habits that keep you stuck, like the raise you talked yourself out of asking for or the stretch role you decided you were not ready for.

You can work on your sticky floor starting this week. The ceiling is going to need public numbers, public questions and a lot of us asking at once.

What I Want You to Take From This

Pay transparency laws are spreading, and they hand you information women have been missing for generations. Use it to pick the company, set the number and ask for the job above yours.

You do not have to wait for your state or your employer to catch up. Look up the range. Read the report. Ask the question. Nothing changes until you do.

Come Do This With Us

The hardest part of negotiating is knowing what everyone else asked for and practicing the words in front of someone with no stake in the outcome. That is what HER Collective is for: weekly live group coaching, monthly masterclasses on things like negotiation and executive presence, hands-on AI training for people who are not technical, and a vault of scripts and replays. It is $297 a quarter or $997 a year, with HER Jumpstart, our four-week live AI and leadership program, included.

Find out what everyone else asked for, then go get yours.

The numbers are finally coming out into the open. Make sure yours goes up with them. I am cheering you on.

Erica

Frequently Asked Questions

What are pay transparency laws?

Pay transparency laws require employers to share pay information they once kept private. Depending on where you work, that can mean posting a pay range on job ads, publishing a company gender pay gap report, or answering a written request about average pay for similar jobs. Ireland, the EU and more than a dozen US states have versions of them.

What does a company's gender pay gap report tell me?

It shows the difference between what men and women at that company earn on average, across all jobs. The most useful part is the quartile breakdown, which shows how many women sit in the top pay band. Few women at the top usually signals a promotion problem, which is where the biggest pay differences build up over a career.

How do I use pay data to negotiate a raise or a promotion?

Start with the posted pay range for your role and ask for the top half, backed by your results. If your company publishes a pay gap report, point to it when you ask for a promotion and offer to help close the gap at the top. Inside HER Collective, we rehearse these exact conversations before women walk into the room.

Erica Anderson Rooney is an ex-CPO turned executive coach and AI educator on a mission to get more women into positions of power and keep them there. She is the author of The AI Gap (2026), host of the Glass Ceilings & Sticky Floors and AI Voice or Victim podcasts, and NC Chapter Lead for Women Applying AI. Her SNAP and AI Continuum frameworks are taught to thousands of women through CHIEF, WICT, and Fortune 500 leadership programs. She is the sought-after speaker at the intersection of women, AI, and leadership.