What to Do When a Cleaning Contractor Wants a Mid-Term Price Increase

Most cleaning contractor price increases landing in Ireland right now are genuine. The wage floor in this sector is set by statutory instrument, not by your contractor, and it moved twice inside fifteen months. So the question is not whether the cost rise is real. It is whether the increase you have been sent is proportionate to it.

Those are two different questions, and almost nobody separates them.

We had a call last November from a budget holder at a professional services firm in Sandyford. A letter had arrived announcing 9.5 per cent from 1 January, justified in a single line about rising operational costs. He was not angry. He just had no way of telling whether 9.5 per cent was fair, generous or opportunistic, and he had a fortnight to decide.

This article gives you the arithmetic he did not have. Where the money actually goes, why prices moved in 2026, and the test that separates a cost pass-through from a margin decision.

Quick answer: Most Irish cleaning price increases in 2026 come from the Contract Cleaning Employment Regulation Order, which raised the adult rate to €14.80 an hour from 1 January 2026. Since labour is roughly 75 to 80 per cent of a cleaning contract, a 5 per cent wage rise justifies about 4 per cent on the total price. Anything materially higher deserves a written breakdown.

Where your cleaning euro actually goes

Contract cleaning is a labour business wearing a service business costume. Once you see the split, every pricing conversation gets easier.

Here is the honest structure of a Dublin commercial cleaning price. These are typical ranges across the sector, not a single contract, and they will not sum to exactly 100 because the ranges overlap.

Add the first six lines together and you land at roughly three-quarters to four-fifths of the invoice. That is the number that matters, and we will come back to it.

Now the part contractors rarely put in writing. Net margin in Irish contract cleaning is thin. A well run contract with stable staff and sensible hours makes mid single digits. A contract that is losing hours to absence cover, or that was priced too keenly at tender, can make nothing at all.

That thinness cuts both ways for you as a buyer. It means a genuine statutory cost rise really does have to be passed on, because there is no fat to absorb it. It also means the difference between a fair increase and an inflated one is not small money to either side.

One more thing worth understanding. The wage line is not just the hourly rate. Every euro added to the rate drags employer PRSI, holiday accrual and the pension contribution up with it, because all three are calculated as a percentage of pay. Contractors call this the on-cost multiplier. If you want the fuller picture of how hours and rates build into a price, we set it out in what the hourly rate for commercial cleaning actually covers.

Why prices moved in 2026

Cleaning wages in Ireland are not set by the market alone. They are set by an Employment Regulation Order, and that is the single most important fact in this article.

The Employment Regulation Order (Contract Cleaning Industry Joint Labour Committee) 2025, S.I. No. 430/2025, set the adult rate at €14.10 per hour from 17 October 2025 and €14.80 per hour from 1 January 2026, with proportionate rates for younger workers. The January step is €0.70 an hour, or approximately 4.96 per cent on the base wage.

Here is how that instrument comes into being, briefly, because the mechanism explains the timing.

The Contract Cleaning Joint Labour Committee is a standing body of employer and worker representatives for this specific industry. When they agree terms, the proposal goes to the Workplace Relations Commission, which submits it to the Minister, who signs it into law as a statutory instrument.

Once signed, it binds every contract cleaning employer in the State. Not the members of an association. Everyone.

That is why every compliant contractor in Dublin faced the same increase on the same morning. Your contractor did not choose 1 January. The Statute Book did.

For comparison, the national minimum wage sits at €14.15 per hour. The contract cleaning rate is above it, which surprises buyers who assume cleaning is a minimum wage sector. It has not been for some time.

Three other costs landed in the same window.

Pension auto-enrolment. My Future Fund went live on 1 January 2026, with an initial employer contribution of 1.5 per cent of gross pay for eligible workers. In a sector where most of the cost base is payroll, that is a real number, and it applies to a workforce that largely had no occupational pension before.

Sick pay, on two tracks. The ERO carries its own scheme, under which the employer pays 20 per cent of the basic weekly rate for up to six weeks of certified illness in a year, with the employee contributing 0.5 per cent of basic pay. Separately, statutory sick leave provides five days a year at 70 per cent of normal wages, subject to a daily cap.

Holiday accrual. Under the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997, holiday entitlement accrues at 8 per cent of hours worked. It is a percentage, so it rises automatically with the hourly rate. Nobody sends a letter about it, but it is in your price.

Materials and insurance have moved too, though less dramatically. For general price context across the economy, the CSO consumer price index is the neutral reference point, and it is a reasonable thing to cite back to a contractor who blames "inflation" without specifics.

The proportionality test

This is the part to actually use. It takes about four minutes.

The logic is simple. If labour is 78 per cent of your price, and labour costs rise 5 per cent, then your total price should rise by 78 per cent of 5 per cent. Not by 5 per cent.

78% x 5% = 3.9%

So a 4.96 per cent wage floor increase justifies roughly 3.75 to 4 per cent on the total contract price before any other cost movement. Layer in auto-enrolment and the PRSI drag on the higher wage, and a mid single digit total increase is defensible. We would not argue with 5 or 6 per cent on a labour-heavy contract in 2026.

An increase of 10, 11 or 12 per cent applied to the whole invoice, including materials and the management fee, is a different animal. That is a margin decision. It may be a justified one, if the contract was underpriced at tender or the scope has quietly grown, but it is not a statutory pass-through, and you are entitled to ask which it is.

Plug in your own numbers

The formula is: monthly value x labour share x wage increase = justified uplift in euro.

Use 6 per cent in the wage column if you want to allow for auto-enrolment and PRSI on top of the ERO step. That is the generous version of the test, and a fair contractor should comfortably land inside it.

The three questions to put in writing

Send these by email, not on a call. You want the answers in a form you can file.

1. What proportion of our contract value is direct labour?
2. How has that labour cost changed since our price was set, in euro per hour and in total hours?
3. Has the increase been applied to the labour element only, or across the whole invoice including materials and the management fee?

A contractor who cannot answer question one does not know their own cost base. That is not a negotiating point, it is a warning sign about how the contract is being managed generally.

The Sandyford client sent those three questions. The reply took eight days and came back with a proper breakdown: labour at 76 per cent, the ERO step, and an honest admission that the original 9.5 per cent had been applied across the full invoice. They settled at 5.4 per cent, applied to labour only, with the price held for twelve months. Nobody lost the contract and nobody was taken advantage of.

Check your contract before you reply

Whether a contractor can raise the price mid-term depends entirely on what you signed. Read the document before you write a single sentence back.

Look for an indexation clause, a statutory cost clause, or an annual review clause. Many Irish cleaning contracts have one. Many are silent.

If there is a clause, check three things: what method it specifies (CPI-linked, ERO-linked, or open), what notice it requires, and whether the proposed increase date actually respects that notice. Increases announced on 20 December to take effect on 1 January frequently do not.

If the contract is silent, an increase is a proposed variation. You can accept it, decline it, or negotiate it, because a variation needs both parties to agree.

The practical caveat matters more than the legal position. Declining outright usually produces a termination notice at the next break, and then you are running a tender you did not plan on running. If you are weighing that road, read what is involved in exiting a cleaning contract early in Ireland before you send anything.

One drafting point worth carrying into your next renewal. A properly written ERO clause is limited to the labour element and requires the calculation to be shown. A clause that permits "an annual increase in line with rising costs" permits almost anything. Fix that at renewal even if you accept this year's number. If your current specification does not even name periodic frequencies clearly, our page on what a proper office cleaning specification should cover is worth reading alongside the pricing clause.

Have your own solicitor or advisor review the clause in your specific contract before you rely on it. We run cleaning contracts for a living, not legal practices, and the wording varies more than you would expect.

What to ask for in return

If the increase passes the proportionality test, do not simply sign it off. Trade it. A contractor asking you for more money in year two is at the most agreeable they will be all year.

Work through this list and pick the three that matter most to your building:

• A twelve-month price hold from the new effective date, in writing
• A longer notice period, moving from one month to three
• The periodic calendar fixed and dated, with carpet, window and deep clean dates in the diary rather than "as required"
• One additional periodic task absorbed at no extra cost, for example an annual internal window clean or a washroom deep sanitise
• A scored monthly audit with a written report to you, not a verbal "all good" — our hidden-area audit method is a good basis for what that report should actually check
• A named supervisor with a named cover person, and a note of who attends when the regular operative is on leave
• Consumables capped at an agreed monthly ceiling, or moved to cost plus a stated percentage
• The hours per visit confirmed in writing, so any future reduction is visible

That last one is quietly the most valuable. Hours are the thing that erodes when a contract gets tight, and once they are documented you can spot it. If you have already noticed the numbers drifting, what to do when your invoice does not match the agreed scope walks through the reconciliation.

Frame the ask professionally. Something like: "We accept the labour cost basis and are happy to agree 5 per cent from March. In return we would like the price held for twelve months and the periodic calendar dated." That reads as a competent budget holder, and it usually works.

When to tender instead

Sometimes the honest answer is that the relationship has run its course. Here is the test we would apply if we were sitting on your side of the table.

Tender if the increase takes your price materially above the local benchmark for genuinely comparable scope and hours. Materially means 15 per cent or more, not 3.

Tender if service has been poor as well as expensive. A price rise on a contract that is already underperforming is the moment to move, and the pattern is usually visible long before the letter arrives. Standards dropping after the first three months is the most common version of it.

Tender if the scope has not been reviewed in more than two years. Buildings change. Desk counts fall, meeting room usage shifts, a floor gets sublet. You may be paying for a 2023 building.

Do not tender purely on price during a statutory wage rise. Every compliant bidder in Dublin is standing on the same €14.80 floor. There is no clever contractor who has found a way around it.

Which brings us to the bid that comes in materially below everyone else. Interrogate it, do not celebrate it.

Ask the bidder how many hours per week their price buys, and at what hourly rate to the operative. Do the division yourself. If the answer implies a rate at or below the ERO floor once on-costs are included, the sums do not work, and something has to give.

What gives is almost always hours. Undercutting in this sector very rarely means better efficiency. It means the same building cleaned in less time, and you will feel it around month four when the skirting boards and the under-desk areas start to slide. To sanity check any bid you receive, our guide to what commercial cleaning actually costs and the Dublin-specific office cleaning cost breakdown both show the hours-to-price arithmetic. There is also a straight answer on what a cleaner per hour costs in Ireland if you want the single number.

And before you serve any notice, get your own advisor to read the termination and notice provisions. That is where these situations get expensive.

Frequently asked questions

Can a cleaning company increase its price in the middle of a contract in Ireland? It depends on the contract. If there is an indexation, review or statutory cost clause, the contractor can increase the price by the method and notice that clause sets out. If the contract is silent, the increase is a proposed variation that needs your agreement, so you can decline or negotiate. Declining outright often prompts a termination notice at the next break.

What is the contract cleaning ERO rate for 2026? The adult rate is €14.80 per hour from 1 January 2026, set by S.I. No. 430/2025. It rose from €14.10, which applied from 17 October 2025. The January step is €0.70 an hour, roughly 4.96 per cent. Proportionate rates apply to younger workers, and the order binds every contract cleaning employer in Ireland.

How much of a cleaning contract is labour cost? Typically 75 to 80 per cent, once wages, employer PRSI, holiday accrual, sick pay, pension auto-enrolment and supervision are counted. Direct wages alone are usually 55 to 62 per cent. That share is why a wage floor increase never justifies the same percentage on the total invoice, and why the labour proportion is the first thing to ask about.

Is a 10 per cent cleaning price increase reasonable? On the 2026 statutory costs alone, no. A roughly 5 per cent wage rise on a 78 per cent labour share justifies about 3.9 per cent, and mid single digits once auto-enrolment and PRSI are added. Ten per cent may still be justifiable if the contract was underpriced or the scope has grown, but that is a commercial conversation, not a pass-through. Ask for the breakdown.

Does pension auto-enrolment affect cleaning contract prices? Yes, modestly. My Future Fund began on 1 January 2026 with an initial employer contribution of 1.5 per cent of gross pay for eligible workers. Because cleaning is so payroll heavy, that translates to roughly 1 per cent on a total contract price. It is a legitimate line in a 2026 increase, and it should be shown separately rather than folded into a vague total.

Should I retender my cleaning contract when prices rise? Not on price alone during a statutory wage increase, because every compliant bidder faces the same floor. Retender if the new price is materially above the local benchmark for the same scope, if service has been poor as well, or if the specification has not been reviewed in over two years. Treat any unusually low bid as a question about hours.

If you want a second price to benchmark against

When statutory wage rates change, we write to clients with the calculation shown and apply the increase to the labour element only. Not to materials. Not to the management fee. The letter includes the hours, the rate movement and the resulting euro figure, because a client who can see the sum does not have to trust us blindly.

If you have an increase letter on your desk and no way to test it, our free Dublin site survey comes with the hours and the labour basis set out in full, so you have something real to compare against. We survey across Grand Canal Dock, Sandyford, Swords, Clondalkin and the wider city and county, and we give you a written room-by-room scope before any number is quoted.

Catalin takes these calls directly on 086 083 6141, or email enquiries@premiercontractcleaning.ie. We have been on both sides of this conversation, and we would rather you stayed with a fair contractor than moved to a cheaper one who cannot hold the hours.

Catalin Fatul

Catalin Fatul is the founder and expert behind Premier Contract Cleaning, dedicated to providing top-notch cleaning solutions and tips. With a passion for cleanliness and a commitment to quality, Catalin brings years of experience in the cleaning industry to help readers maintain pristine spaces. Whether it's offering the latest cleaning hacks or recommending the best products, Catalin's mission is to make cleaning efficient, effective, and enjoyable.