How to submit your pension contribution schedule..

Submitting your contribution schedules

If you choose to pay by electronic fund transfer or by variable direct debit, you are required to submit a matching pension contribution schedule.


Irish Life Corporate Business will accept pension contribution schedules in the following ways:

Payroll Download

By choosing this option, you download contributions from your payroll system and submit them to us electronically.

If you decide to submit your contribution schedule by email, you will be responsible for ensuring that the data is secure. This can be submitted by email to Happytohelp@irishlife.ie quoting your scheme name, scheme number and the month the schedule is in respect of.

Alternatively you can also avail of our Secure Path service to avoid installing additional software to encrypt or decrypt the confidental files. See below for further detail.

For a list of providers that we can facilitate payroll download files, please click here - Payroll Download

Payment Express

If you can answer “Yes” to any of the questions below, then our Payment Express service is for you:

  • Do you key contribution breakdown data into an excel spreadsheet or word document each month?
  • Do you use PDFs to submit your contribution breakdowns?
  • Would you like to have your contribution breakdowns validated online immediately?
  • Does your scheme have less than 30 members?

Payment Express is an online service from Irish Life Corporate Business. It allows those responsible for submitting contribution breakdowns to Irish Life to key their breakdowns in online in a secure manner.

Payment Express is available to employers, consultants and trustees responsible for creating or submitting contributions breakdowns to Irish Life Corporate Business.

To use Payment Express, you must be a registered user of Pension Planet Interactive and your pension scheme must have less than 30 members.

To find out how to access this function on Pension Planet Interactive and the step-by-step process, download this pdf on Payment Express.

Excel spreadsheets

If you choose to submit the contributions in excel, we require the excel spreadsheet in this format - Excel Spreadsheet – Irish Life standard format

If you decide to submit your contribution schedule by email, you will be responsible for ensuring that the data is secure. The contributions can be submitted by email to Happytohelp@irishlife.ie quoting your scheme name, scheme number and the month the schedule is in respect of.

Alternatively you can also avail of our Secure Path service to avoid installing additional software to encrypt or decrypt the confidental files. See below for further detail.

Secure Path

If you can answer ‘Yes’ to any of the questions below, our Secure Path service could be just what you have been looking for:

  • Are you concerned about data security?
  • Do you dislike sending sensitive data using email?
  • Do you find it cumbersome or time consuming to encrypt your emails?
  • Do you use password protected Excel files to secure the information you are sending to us by email?

Security and data protection is an ongoing concern for any organisation that relies on electronic communication. Secure Path helps you meet your obligation in regards to the safe transmission of data under the Data Protection Act. It is a facility available to you as part of our online Pension Planet Interactive service.

Secure Path allows you to quickly and easily send scheme sensitive information (e.g. pension contribution schedules) to Irish Life Corporate Business, securely and effortlessly.

Why you should use Secure Path

  • You don’t need to install any additional software to encrypt or decrypt the files.
  • Once you send a file using Secure Path, you receive a unique reference number. Not only can this be used to quickly refer to a file, but it assures you that Irish Life has received your file.
  • If you choose to upload the contributions in excel, we require the excel spreadsheet in this format - Excel Spreadsheet – Irish Life standard format
  • You get peace of mind. Your sensitive data is automatically encrypted using industry standard high security encryption.

How to register for the Secure Path service

In order to register to use the Secure Path service, send an email to Happytohelp@irishlife.ie quoting your scheme name and number and tell us you wish to register for Pension Planet Interactive and the Secure Path Service.

Secure Path is available to all employers, consultants, payroll providers and scheme trustees who are registered users of Pension Planet Interactive.

To find out how to access this function on Pension Planet Interactive and the step-by-step process, download this PDF about Secure Path.

21 day rule - Pensions Amendment Act

There is a requirement for employers to meet their compliance obligations in relation to the '21 day rule' (Pensions Amendment Act).

The requirement is that all contributions deducted from employees and due from employers must be paid to the pension scheme within 21 days of the end of the month in which they were deducted or became due. It is your responsibility to ensure that you arrange for the transmission of this report and payment of contributions within the prescribed timeframe.