How Many Employees Does One 24/7 Post Need in Ireland?
Holding one position every hour of 2026 in Ireland takes 8,766 staffed hours. One full-time employee is genuinely available for about 1,715 of them, so the post needs 5.11 employees, which is 6 whole people.
One ring per person, one year each
Each ring is one employee's year, broken wherever they are on holiday, on leave, or off sick. No single ring closes, which is the whole problem: one person cannot hold a post that never stops.
Stack 6 of them and the picture closes. Trace any line out from the center and it crosses at least one solid arc, so every hour of 2026 has somebody on it. That is the relief factor, drawn rather than asserted.
Where the number comes from
- 1
Staffing one position 168 hours a week comes to 8,766 hours across the year.
- 2
Ireland has 261 weekdays in the year, the starting point for one employee.
- 3
Take out 9 public holidays that fall on a weekday, 20 days of statutory paid leave, 8 days of average sickness absence, and 3 days of training: 40 days lost.
- 4
That leaves 221 working days per employee, and at a 38.8-hour week that is 7.76 hours a day, so 1,715 available hours a year.
- 5
8,766 coverage hours divided by 1,715 available hours is a relief factor of 5.11, so the post needs 6 people.
| Weekdays in the year | 261 |
| Public holidays on a weekday | −9 |
| Statutory paid annual leave | −20 |
| Average sickness absence | −8 |
| Training and onboarding (assumed) | −3 |
| Working days available | 221 |
| At 7.76 hours a day | 1,715 hours |
Paid public holidays are a statutory entitlement in Ireland, so they sit on top of annual leave and are deducted separately here.
The training allowance of 3 days is a planning assumption rather than a sourced statistic, and it is deliberately low. Every other figure on this page carries a source. If your operation runs heavy certification cycles, raise it and the relief factor rises with it.
What the usual rule of thumb gets wrong here
The common shortcut is to divide coverage hours by contracted hours and add a quarter for absence. In Ireland that gives 5.41 against a derived answer of 5.11, so the shortcut is high by 5.8 percent. A flat buffer travels badly because the things it stands in for, statutory leave and the length of the contracted week, are set nationally.
Nobody ever away. Not a real answer.
The usual shortcut, over by 5.8%.
From Ireland's own leave, hours, and absence.
Other coverage shapes
The same availability figure answers any coverage window. Only the hours the post must be staffed change.
| Coverage | Hours a week | Relief factor | People |
|---|---|---|---|
| Round the clock, every day | 168 | 5.11 | 6 |
| Round the clock, weekdays only | 120 | 3.65 | 4 |
| Two shifts, every day | 112 | 3.41 | 4 |
| Extended day, weekdays only | 60 | 1.83 | 2 |
If your contract is more generous
20 days is the statutory floor in Ireland, and most employers sit above it. Every extra week of leave is another week the post has to be covered by somebody else.
| Annual leave | Relief factor | People per post |
|---|---|---|
| 20 daysstatutory floor | 5.11 | 6 |
| 25 days | 5.23 | 6 |
| 28 days | 5.3 | 6 |
| 30 days | 5.35 | 6 |
| 33 days | 5.43 | 6 |
The inputs, and what they do not say
How the leave figure is defined
Irish law states the entitlement in WORKING WEEKS, not days: 4 working weeks per leave year under s.19(1)(a) of the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997, where s.19(6) defines a working week as the number of days the employee usually works. On a 5-day week that converts to 20 working days. It EXCLUDES public holidays, which are a separate entitlement under s.21 (10 public holidays in Ireland).
Why the contracted week is not the legal maximum
This page divides by a 38.8-hour week, the typical full-time contract in Ireland, not by the 48-hour statutory figure. That larger number is a legal ceiling on how much someone may be asked to work, not a description of what a full-time employee is contracted for, and using it as capacity would understate the headcount a post needs.
What these figures cannot be used for
Not a ranking. The sickness figure here comes from the OECD labour force survey, while most other countries in this library use a national statistical source. Those systems define absence differently, and self-reported survey figures undercount short spells that administrative records capture. Each number is the best available answer for planning inside its own country, and the gap between any two of them is partly a gap between statistical methods rather than between workforces.
A relief factor also says nothing about whether a roster is legal or humane. It sets how many people the post needs across a year; it does not check rest periods between shifts, consecutive nights, or weekend distribution. Those constraints decide whether the pattern you build on top of this headcount is one anybody can actually work.
Research notes on Ireland
STATUTORY WEEK IS A CEILING, NOT A NORM. Ireland has no statutory standard or normal working week. The 48 hours in s.15 of the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 is a maximum AVERAGE over a reference period of 4 months (6 months for security, hospitals, prisons, gas and electricity, airports and docks, agriculture and seasonal peak businesses; up to 12 months by Labour Court approved collective agreement). Do not use 48 as a full-time baseline in coverage math, it will understate headcount badly. Unlike the UK there is no individual opt-out from the 48-hour average. The Act does not apply to An Garda Siochana, the Defence Forces on active service, employees who control their own working hours, family employees on farms or in private homes, and certain civil protection services.
COLLECTIVE WEEK IS A PROXY, NOT A CONTRACT TERM. Ireland has low collective bargaining coverage and no single national collectively agreed week, so there is no authoritative "collectively agreed hours" figure the way there is in Germany or the Nordics. 38.8 is the Eurostat LFS average USUAL weekly hours in the main job for full-time employees aged 15 to 64 in Ireland, 2025 (table lfsa_ewhun2). That is the closest official measure of the typical full-time week in practice. It is a population average across a distribution, not a standard contract. Common contracted full-time weeks in Irish contracts run 37.5 to 39 hours, and the construction Sectoral Employment Order sets 39 hours over 5 days. Recent Eurostat series for context: 2022 39.5, 2023 39.1, 2024 38.9, 2025 38.8.
LEAVE: THE COMMON ERROR. The single most frequent mistake in Irish leave data is bundling public holidays into the headline number. 20 working days is annual leave only. Ireland has 10 public holidays (New Year's Day, first Monday in February, St Patrick's Day, Easter Monday, first Monday in May, first Monday in June, first Monday in August, last Monday in October, Christmas Day, St Stephen's Day; Good Friday is NOT a public holiday). Combined that is 30 paid days off, which is why 29 or 30 day figures circulate for Ireland. Do not add public holidays on top of 20 if your model already counts them separately. The confusion is compounded because one of the four employer options for benefiting an employee for a public holiday under s.21 is literally "an additional day of annual leave", so public holiday benefit can show up inside an employee's leave balance even though it is a distinct statutory entitlement.
20 days assumes a full-year, 5-day, full-time worker who works at least 1,365 hours in the leave year. s.19 also gives one third of a working week per calendar month in which the employee works at least 117 hours, or 8 per cent of hours worked capped at 4 working weeks, whichever is greatest. Part-timers and mid-year joiners accrue on those alternative bases. The statutory leave year runs 1 April to 31 March, though most employers use the calendar year.
SICKNESS: MODELLED ESTIMATE, TREAT WITH CAUTION. Ireland's CSO does not publish an annual sick-days-per-employee series, and the WHO European Health for All database explicitly lists Ireland as having no data for its absenteeism indicator. The figure used here is OECD Health Statistics, "Sickness absences of full-time dependent employees, annual averages", Ireland 2025 = 1.6 weeks per year per person. Conversion: 1.6 weeks x 5 working days per week = 8.0 working days per employee per year. Series for context, in weeks: 2019 1.4, 2020 1.5, 2021 1.8, 2022 1.9, 2023 1.6, 2024 1.5, 2025 1.6, so 2024 would give 7.5 days.
Three methodology caveats on that 8.0. First, per OECD's own definitions note, Ireland's contribution covers FULL-WEEK absences only, so one and two day absences are not directly observed for Ireland. Second, OECD multiplies the raw labour force survey estimate by a factor of 2 to correct for an estimated 50 per cent underreporting relative to health surveys, so this is a modelled figure and not an administrative count. Third, it covers full-time dependent employees only, not part-timers or the self-employed. For shift-coverage planning treat 8 days as a central estimate with a plausible range of roughly 6 to 10, and prefer the operator's own absence data where available.
Do not confuse average sickness absence with statutory sick pay. Ireland's Sick Leave Act 2022 entitlement was 3 days in 2023 and 5 days in 2024, and the WRC confirms it remained at 5 days in 2025, paid at 70 per cent of usual daily earnings capped at 110 euro per day. That is an employer pay obligation, not a measure of how much absence actually occurs.
Sources
Every figure above except the training allowance was checked against one of these.
statutoryWeeklyHours: maximum average of 48 hours in each period of 7 days, averaged over a reference period not exceeding 4 months (s.15(1))
Irish Statute Book, Office of the Attorney General (Organisation of Working Time Act 1997, s.15)1997
statutoryWeeklyHours corroboration: "The maximum number of hours that an employee should work in an average working week is 48 hours", plus the 4, 6 and 12 month reference periods and the categories excluded from the Act
Workplace Relations Commission (Irish statutory body), Working Hours2026
statutoryAnnualLeaveDays: "4 working weeks in a leave year in which he or she works at least 1,365 hours" (s.19(1)(a)); "References in this section to a working week shall be construed as references to the number of days that the employee concerned usually works in a week" (s.19(6))
Irish Statute Book, Office of the Attorney General (Organisation of Working Time Act 1997, s.19)1997
statutoryAnnualLeaveDays corroboration: "Most employees are entitled to four weeks paid annual leave per leave year" and "the maximum statutory annual leave entitlement of an employee in a leave year is four of his/her normal working weeks"
Workplace Relations Commission (Irish statutory body), Annual Leave2026
leaveBasis check: public holidays are a separate statutory entitlement of 10 days, benefited by a paid day off, a paid day off within a month, an additional day of annual leave, or an additional day of pay. Good Friday is not a public holiday.
Workplace Relations Commission (Irish statutory body), Public Holidays2026
collectiveWeeklyHours: 38.8 hours, average usual weekly hours of work in main job, employees, full-time, age 15-64, Ireland, 2025 (2024 = 38.9, 2023 = 39.1, 2022 = 39.5)
sicknessDaysPerYear source value: 1.6 weeks per year per person, "Sickness absences of full-time dependent employees, annual averages", Ireland 2025. Converted at 5 working days per week to 8.0 days.
sicknessDaysPerYear methodology: weeks of absence calculated as hours absent relative to usual weekly hours multiplied by 52, then multiplied by a factor of 2 to correct for estimated 50% underreporting in labour force surveys; Ireland coverage note states "Data refer only to full-week absences"
Context only, not a core figure: statutory sick pay entitlement was 3 days in 2023, 5 days in 2024 and remained 5 days in 2025 at 70% of usual daily earnings capped at 110 euro per day
Workplace Relations Commission (Irish statutory body), Sick Leave2025
Common questions
- How many people does one 24/7 position need in Ireland?
- 6 people. One position staffed every hour of the year is 8,766 hours, and one full-time employee in Ireland is actually available for about 1,715 of them once 40 days of holidays, leave, sickness and training come out. That is a relief factor of 5.11, which rounds up to 6 whole people.
- What is a relief factor?
- The number of employees needed to keep one position filled continuously, once the days nobody works are taken out. It is coverage hours divided by the hours one employee is genuinely available. In Ireland that is 8,766 divided by 1,715, or 5.11. A factor below the headcount you actually employ means the post runs on overtime.
- Why is a flat 25 percent absence buffer not enough for Ireland?
- Because it overshoots here. A raw hours calculation gives 4.33 employees, and adding a flat quarter takes that to 5.41, against a derived answer of 5.11. That is 5.8 percent too high, because the rule of thumb assumes more leave and sickness than Ireland actually loses.
- Does the statutory leave minimum reflect what employers actually give in Ireland?
- It is a floor, not a norm. This page computes on the statutory minimum of 20 working days because that is the figure the law fixes and a source can be attached to. Most employers sit above it, and the sensitivity table on this page shows what the relief factor becomes at more generous entitlements, so a planner can find their own contract rather than taking the floor as the answer.
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