The 2026 Contract Cleaning ERO, explained for the people who pay the invoice

What actually changed

Contract cleaning in Ireland is one of a small number of sectors governed by an Employment Regulation Order (ERO) — a legally binding pay floor agreed through a Joint Labour Committee and signed by the Minister. It is not a guideline. It applies to every business supplying contract cleaning services, regardless of size.

The order signed in September 2025 moved the sector in two steps:

• €14.10 per hour from 1 October 2025.
• €14.80 per hour from 1 January 2026.
• A new unsocial hours premium of €1.00 per hour for work between midnight and 6:00 a.m., payable for a minimum of three hours.

For context, the National Minimum Wage in 2026 is €13.50 per hour. The contract cleaning floor sits €1.30 above it. A cleaner on the sector minimum is, by law, not a minimum-wage worker.

Why it lands on your invoice

Cleaning is a labour business. Somewhere between 70% and 80% of the cost of a commercial cleaning contract is the person doing the work and the statutory costs attached to them. When the floor moves, there are only three places the money can come from:

1. The price goes up. Honest, predictable, and easy to plan around.
2. The hours go down. The price holds, but the team is on site for less time. The specification quietly stops being met.
3. Someone isn't paying the ERO. Which is a compliance exposure — and increasingly, a reputational one for the client as well as the contractor.

Option two is the common one, and it is the hardest to detect. Nothing on paper changes. The invoice looks identical. The bins just start getting missed on Fridays, and it takes four months and a staff complaint before anyone connects the two.

This is precisely the failure mode a proof-led contract is designed to remove. If every visit produces a check-in time, a completed checklist and a photo set, a quiet reduction in hours becomes visible in week one instead of month four.

What a compliant quote looks like

You do not need to audit anyone's payroll. You need a quote that is arithmetically capable of being legal. Ask for three numbers:

• Hours on site per visit — not "a team", an actual number of person-hours.
• Number of operatives — two people for 90 minutes is three person-hours, not 90 minutes.
• The all-in hourly rate the quote implies.

Divide the monthly price by the monthly person-hours. If the result is close to or below €14.80, the quote cannot be covering ERO pay plus employer PRSI plus holiday pay plus materials plus insurance plus any margin at all. Something in that stack is not being paid.

A realistic all-in commercial rate in 2026 sits meaningfully above the ERO floor once employer costs (roughly 11.15% PRSI), holiday accrual (8%), consumables, equipment, supervision, insurance and margin are layered on. Quotes that undercut that band are usually buying the contract, not costing it.

Four red flags in a cleaning quote

What to do at your next renewal

Three questions, in writing, to your current provider or anyone bidding:

1. How many person-hours per week does this price buy, and how are they distributed?
2. Confirm in writing that all operatives on our site are paid at or above the applicable Contract Cleaning ERO rate.
3. What evidence will we receive after each visit that the specification was met?

Any contractor operating properly can answer all three in a paragraph. The ones who can't will tell you that too, in how long it takes them to reply.