Civil service pay scales in Ireland

Every role side by side

6 roles covered so far, ordered by starting salary, each from its entry grade to its highest. Every grade and scale within them has its own row further down. The ceiling column includes any long service increments, and the years column is how long it takes to get there.

Every grade, one row each

All 11 grades on the 2026 scales, each on its own row, ordered by starting salary. The ceiling includes any long service increment. Type to find yours.

No grade matches that. Try a shorter word, such as "senior" or "manager".

Where the ladder overlaps

Promotion always raises your ceiling and your pension. What it does not always do is raise your pay on the day it happens, because the grade you leave can pay more at the top than the grade you join pays at the bottom.

On 2 of these 4 steps the top of the lower grade pays more than the first point of the grade above it.

Ceilings include any long service increment, which is what you reach by staying, not by being promoted. Someone who has not yet earned theirs sees a smaller overlap than the table shows.

How pay works in this sector

Every grade here comes from the same circular and shares the same structure. Each carries two long service increments, LSI1 after three years at the maximum of the scale and LSI2 after six, which is why the published ceiling of a grade is always higher than its last ordinary point. They are earned by staying, not by being promoted, and they are the reason two people on the same grade can be several thousand euro apart.

All figures are the PPC scale, meaning Personal Pension Contribution. It applies to anyone recruited since 6 April 1995, which is effectively everyone serving today. Older non PPC scales still exist in the circular and pay slightly less, because the pension arrangement behind them is different. If a figure you have been quoted is a little below the ones here, that is usually why.

Most grades have two scales, standard and higher, and this catches people out more than anything else on this page. The higher scale is not a reward for good work and it is not something you apply for. It attaches to certain posts, and it generally begins where point 3 of the standard scale sits and runs further. Two people appointed to the same grade on the same day can therefore be on different money because of which post they filled, and moving from a higher scale post back to a standard one is a real cut.

Administrative Officer sits outside the main ladder. The general service progression runs Clerical Officer, Executive Officer, Higher Executive Officer, Assistant Principal, Principal Officer. Administrative Officer is a separate graduate entry route that starts above an Executive Officer and leads towards Assistant Principal, so it is not the grade an EO is promoted into.

One quirk worth knowing before you compare anything: Clerical Officer is published as a weekly rate rather than an annual salary. Its official figure is €611.75 a week at point 1, and every annual figure for that grade on this site is that rate multiplied by 52. Every other grade in the civil service is published annually.

The grades themselves are not interchangeable with the numbered ladders used elsewhere in the public service. A health service Grade IV and a local authority Grade 4 sit within a few euro of each other because their circulars track one another closely, but neither maps cleanly onto Executive Officer or anything else here. Compare the actual scale, never the label.

One last thing, and it is the one that confuses outsiders most: nobody says the full titles. A job advert says AP, a colleague says she is an EO, and an internal circular will run three pages without spelling any of them out. In order they are CO Clerical Officer, EO Executive Officer, AO Administrative Officer, HEO Higher Executive Officer, AP Assistant Principal and PO Principal Officer.

Questions people ask most

Pick a grade

Every grade in this sector, including any kept out of the table above because their pay is not a salary.