What to Do When You Discover Your Cleaning Contractor Is Underpaying Staff

An office manager in Dublin 2 rang us to ask for a quote, and then, before we had talked about anything else, told us why.

One of the cleaners had mentioned, almost in passing, what she was paid. It was below the legal rate for contract cleaning in Ireland. The manager had assumed for two years that the price on the invoice reflected somebody's efficiency. She was mortified, and her first question was not about cleaning at all. It was whether she had caused it by accepting the cheapest quote.

We walked her through the Employment Regulation Order, priced the contract honestly against what the law actually requires, and when she moved the contract, the same cleaners transferred to us under TUPE and onto correct rates. Same people, same building, different payslip.

The Short Answer: Your First Moves

If you discover your cleaning contractor is underpaying staff, document what you know, check the pay against the Contract Cleaning ERO minimum of EUR 14.80 per hour from January 2026, raise it formally with the contractor, and take advice on your contract. Cleaners themselves can complain to the WRC. Plan an exit if it is not fixed fast.

Two things to hold onto while you work through this. The cleaners are the people with the most at stake, and their rights are not yours to negotiate away. And a contractor who cannot pay legal rates on your contract is not saving you money, they are borrowing it from someone earning fourteen euro an hour.

The Legal Floor: What Contract Cleaners Must Be Paid in Ireland

The Contract Cleaning ERO in Plain English

Contract cleaning in Ireland is not governed by the national minimum wage alone. It has its own sector wide legal minimum, set through an Employment Regulation Order made on the proposals of the Contract Cleaning Joint Labour Committee.

An ERO is legally binding on every employer in the sector. It is not a guideline, a recommendation or an industry aspiration. It sets a floor, and the Workplace Relations Commission enforces it.

The current order is S.I. No. 430 of 2025, effective from 17 October 2025, covering over 30,000 workers.

Current Rates and Dates

Most contract cleaners are on the adult rate, so EUR 14.80 per hour is the number to check against.

Rates change when a new order is made, so verify the current figures on the WRC's contract cleaning ERO page before you rely on them in a formal letter.

Beyond the Hourly Rate: Sick Pay, Premiums and Other Entitlements

The hourly rate is the headline, but the order carries more than that, and this is where underpayment often hides in plain sight.

An industry sick pay scheme. The ERO scheme provides 20 percent of the basic weekly rate for up to six weeks in any one rolling year, funded partly by an employee contribution of 0.5 percent of basic pay. It applies to certified illness, with a medical certificate on day three and weekly after that. This sits alongside the employee's statutory sick leave entitlement.

A death in service benefit of EUR 5,000, payable after two years of continuous service and available up to state pension age.

An unsocial hours premium of EUR 1.00 per hour on top of the hourly rate for work between midnight and six in the morning, where at least three hours are worked within that window.

Note that premium window carefully. Some published summaries state it applies from six in the evening. It does not. It is midnight to six, and a contractor claiming otherwise either way is worth a second look.

Are You, the Client, Liable?

Legal Exposure: Where the Line Actually Is

The contractor is the employer. The legal duty to pay ERO rates sits with them, WRC complaints run against them, and enforcement is directed at them. As the client buying the service, you are not the cleaners' employer and you do not carry that primary liability.

That is the accurate answer and you should take some comfort from it. It is also not the whole answer, and anyone telling you it is has stopped thinking one step too early. Where a client's own conduct is in question, that is a matter for your solicitor rather than for a blog, so take advice if you are worried about your specific position.

Reputational and Contractual Exposure: The Bigger Risk

The risks that actually land on a Dublin business are these.

Reputation. Underpayment discovered at your building becomes a story about your building. Staff talk, and so do tenants in a shared block.

Procurement and ESG policy. If your organisation has a supplier code of conduct, a modern slavery or ethical procurement statement, or ESG reporting obligations, a non compliant supplier is a breach of your own policy regardless of employment law. That is an internal problem with a paper trail.

Service continuity. Contractors who underpay have high turnover, thin supervision and unstable rosters. The cleaning quality problem you may already be noticing and the pay problem are usually the same problem.

Disruption. A contractor facing WRC inspection or losing staff mid contract does not improve while it sorts itself out.

Your own governance. For an OMC director or procurement lead, "we took the cheapest quote and asked no questions" is an uncomfortable sentence to say to a board.

Step by Step: How to Handle It

Step 1. Record What You Learned and How

Write it down the same day. What you were told or saw, when, and by whom. Keep it factual and keep it discreet.

Be careful with the cleaner's identity. If someone confided in you, they may be worried about their job. Do not use their name in correspondence with the contractor without asking them first.

Step 2. Check the Numbers Against the ERO

Compare what you have been told against the current adult rate. Check hours as well as the rate, because underpayment frequently shows up as unpaid time rather than a low headline rate: hours worked but not recorded, unpaid travel between sites in the same shift, or a two hour clean paid as ninety minutes.

Check for the extras too. Night work between midnight and six without the premium, or no sick pay scheme, are ERO breaches in their own right.

Step 3. Raise It Formally With the Contractor and Require Evidence

Put it in writing to a named senior person, not in a passing remark to a supervisor.

Ask for three specific things: written confirmation of the hourly rates paid to the operatives on your site, confirmation that they are compliant with S.I. No. 430 of 2025 including the sick pay scheme and premiums, and anonymised payslip or payroll evidence for the site.

A compliant contractor will find this request straightforward. Ours would. An evasive answer, a delay, or an offer to "have a chat about it" instead of sending documents is itself informative.

Step 4. Support the Cleaners' Own Rights, Do Not Silence Them

This is the part that matters most and gets the least attention.

A worker who believes they have been underpaid can bring a complaint to the Workplace Relations Commission themselves, and employment law protects employees from being penalised for asserting their rights. Your role is not to make that complaint on their behalf, and it is certainly not to discourage it.

If a cleaner asks you what to do, the right answer is to point them to the WRC and to their union if they have one, and to say plainly that you will not hold it against them. Do not offer to "sort it quietly" with the contractor in a way that leaves the individual exposed.

Step 5. Review Your Contract and Plan the Exit if Needed

Get the service agreement out and look for the termination provisions, the notice period, any clause requiring compliance with employment legislation, and any audit or information rights you already have.

Then involve HR or legal before you act. Terminating for breach is a legal question, and doing it badly can leave you without a cleaning service and in a dispute at the same time.

In parallel, start the re-tender quietly. Having a compliant alternative lined up is what turns a difficult conversation into a decision you control. If you'd like a second opinion on your current contract before you serve any notice, our free site survey is a low pressure place to start.

The Price Test: Why the Cheapest Cleaning Quote Is Often the Problem

Here is the arithmetic that nobody puts in a tender document.

From January 2026 a contract cleaner aged twenty or over must be paid at least EUR 14.80 an hour. On top of that wage, a legitimate employer carries employer PRSI, holiday pay accrual, public holiday entitlement, the ERO sick pay scheme, the death in service benefit, night premiums where they apply, supervision, training, Garda screening, insurance, equipment, consumables and chemicals, transport between sites, and management overhead. Then, finally, margin.

You do not need our figures to see where that lands. Take EUR 14.80, add the statutory employment costs, add the cost of actually running a business, and you arrive at a floor beneath which a charge rate cannot honestly go.

So when one quote comes in dramatically below the others, the useful question is not "how are they so efficient?" It is "what is being left out, and who is paying for it?" In practice the answer is one of a small number of things: the cleaner is underpaid, the hours on the schedule are not the hours actually worked, the staff are not properly employed at all, or the specification will quietly not be delivered.

Red flags worth naming in any tender:

• A price meaningfully below every other bid with no explanation of how
• Refusal or reluctance to state the hourly rate paid to operatives
• No mention of ERO compliance anywhere in the submission
• Hours on the schedule that do not match the size of the building
• No supervision costed into the price
• Vagueness about who employs the cleaners

And three questions to add to your tender document: what hourly rate will be paid to operatives on this contract, how do you comply with the Contract Cleaning ERO, and will you provide payroll evidence on request during the contract.

If you want to see how a compliant price is built, ask us for the breakdown behind our quote. We are happy to show the working.

What Happens to the Cleaners if You Switch Contractor? TUPE, Handled Properly

The fear that stops most clients acting is that changing contractor means the cleaners lose their jobs. Usually the opposite is true.

Where a service transfers from one provider to another, the Transfer of Undertakings regulations can apply, and the existing staff transfer to the incoming contractor with their continuity of service and terms preserved. The point of a change is not to remove the cleaners. It is to move them to an employer who pays them lawfully.

In practice a properly run handover involves the outgoing contractor providing employee information, both sides consulting with the affected staff, and the incoming contractor confirming terms in writing before day one. Where the transferring pay rates are below the legal minimum, the incoming employer has to put that right going forward, because an unlawful rate does not become lawful by being inherited.

TUPE has genuine complexity and the specifics depend on the arrangement, so take legal advice on your particular situation rather than assuming.

How We Do It at Premier

Back to that Dublin 2 office.

We surveyed the building, costed it against real ERO compliant employment costs, and gave the manager a quote that was higher than what she had been paying. We also told her why, line by line, because a higher number without an explanation just looks like a worse deal.

The transfer happened on a Monday. The same cleaners walked into the same building, now employed by us, on correct rates from day one, with the sick pay scheme and the rest of the ERO entitlements in place. We put a supervisor on the site for the first fortnight.

What the client noticed within about six weeks was not really about pay. It was that the same two people came every night, they knew where things were, and the standard stopped fluctuating. Turnover is what wrecks cleaning quality, and underpayment is what drives turnover.

Catalin, who founded the company, puts it simply: you cannot deliver reliable cleaning on illegal wages, because the people who accept illegal wages leave the moment anything better appears. Our hours are logged through our management system rather than estimated, which means what the client is billed for and what the operative is paid for are the same hours.

Nearly a decade in Dublin and a 5.0 rating across more than 113 Google reviews is downstream of that, not separate from it.

The Dublin Angle: Why This Matters More in This Market

Dublin sharpens every part of this.

The cost of living here means the gap between a legal rate and an underpaid one is not academic, it is the difference between a job someone can keep and one they cannot. That translates directly into turnover, and turnover translates into a different face in your office every fortnight.

Large multi tenant buildings in Dublin 1, Dublin 2 and the Docklands increasingly operate supplier codes of conduct, and tenants in those buildings are asked to evidence their own supply chains. A cleaning contract that would not survive a question at an ESG review is a live risk in those blocks, not a theoretical one.

And for OMC directors and property managers, procurement decisions get made in front of a board and minuted. Choosing the lowest number is defensible right up until somebody asks how that number was possible.

FAQ: Cleaning Contractor Pay Compliance in Ireland

What is the minimum wage for contract cleaners in Ireland in 2026? Under S.I. No. 430 of 2025, contract cleaners aged twenty and over must be paid at least EUR 14.10 per hour from 17 October 2025 and EUR 14.80 per hour from 1 January 2026, with lower rates for workers under twenty. Check the WRC page for the current order.

What is the Contract Cleaning ERO and who does it cover? An Employment Regulation Order is a legally binding sectoral pay order made on the proposals of a Joint Labour Committee. The contract cleaning ERO covers workers employed by contract cleaning companies in Ireland, more than 30,000 people, and sets minimum rates, a sick pay scheme and other entitlements.

Am I liable if my cleaning contractor underpays its staff? The contractor is the employer and carries the primary legal responsibility, and Workplace Relations Commission complaints run against them. Clients still face reputational, procurement policy and service continuity risks. If you are concerned about your own position, take legal advice on your specific contract.

How do cleaners make a complaint to the WRC? A worker can submit a complaint to the Workplace Relations Commission directly, including for underpayment of ERO rates. Employment law protects employees from being penalised for asserting their rights. A union can assist. As a client, point them to the WRC rather than intervening on their behalf.

What happens to cleaning staff when we change contractor? Where a service transfers between providers, the Transfer of Undertakings regulations can apply and staff may transfer to the incoming contractor with continuity of service and terms preserved. Switching does not automatically mean redundancies. Take legal advice on how TUPE applies to your arrangement.

How can I tell if a cleaning quote is too cheap to be legal? Work from the floor up. EUR 14.80 per hour plus employer PRSI, holiday and public holiday pay, the ERO sick pay scheme, supervision, insurance, equipment and overhead sets a real minimum. A price well below that cannot cover lawful employment costs, so ask the bidder to explain how it does.

Do contract cleaners in Ireland get sick pay? Yes. The ERO includes an industry sick pay scheme providing 20 percent of the basic weekly rate for up to six weeks in a rolling year for certified illness, part funded by a small employee contribution, alongside statutory sick leave entitlements. Absence of any scheme is itself a compliance failure.

Can I end a cleaning contract because the contractor breaks employment law? That depends entirely on your service agreement, its termination and compliance clauses, and the notice period. Some contracts include an express requirement to comply with employment legislation. Get the agreement reviewed by your solicitor before serving any notice.

Want a Cleaning Partner That Pays Properly? Talk to Us

If you are mid tender, or you have just had an uncomfortable conversation with someone who cleans your office, we are a straightforward call.

Our free site survey gives you an honest quote built on ERO compliant employment costs, and we will show you how the price is constructed rather than asking you to take it on trust. If our number is higher than another bid, we would rather explain exactly why than win the work by pretending the wage floor does not exist. Our re clean guarantee means that if a standard is ever not right, we come back and do it again at no cost.

We pay our cleaners properly because it is the law, and because it is the only way to keep the same reliable people in your building year after year. Learn more about our commercial cleaning Dublin service.

Call 086 083 6141 or email enquiries@premiercontractcleaning.ie, or contact us here.

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