How Much to Charge for Electrical Work in Ireland in 2026

What an Irish electrical quote needs to include

Because the work is legally regulated, the quote needs to double as evidence the job was done by someone entitled to do it. Nine things, every time:

1. 1Your business details — name, logo, contact details, and your Safe Electric REC registration number.
2. 2The customer's name and the site address — property age and existing wiring type (plenty of older Irish homes still have pre-rewireable fuses) both move the price.
3. 3A quote number and date.
4. 4Itemised line items — never one lump sum for "electrical work".
5. 5What's not included — making good plasterwork beyond a first-fix patch, decorating, external cabling unless specified.
6. 6Certification — that you're a Registered Electrical Contractor, and that a Completion Certificate will be issued on handover.
7. 7The VAT rate applied, and why — 13.5% or 23%, shown as its own line rather than folded silently into the price (see the VAT section below).
8. 8Subtotal, VAT, and the total, all in euro.
9. 9A valid-until date — 14–30 days is standard — and payment terms: deposit for materials, balance on completion and handover of the Completion Certificate.

Most quotes that lose jobs on price alone are missing the registration and certification lines — homeowners increasingly assume they're included, and when they're not stated plainly, a "cheap" quote starts to look like the riskier one.

Safe Electric isn't optional — and stating it wins trust

Irish law requires that electrical work in a home is carried out by a Registered Electrical Contractor (REC). The scheme that enforces this — Safe Electric — is regulated by the Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU) and requires every REC to work to Irish wiring standards, demonstrate technical competence, and carry insurance. When an REC finishes a job, they must hand the homeowner a Completion Certificate confirming the work is safe and compliant.

This isn't a box-ticking formality. The CRU actively pursues prosecutions against unregistered individuals carrying out electrical work, and Safe Electric encourages homeowners to report anyone who claims to be registered without being on the scheme. That means a growing number of Irish customers now check before they book — and a quote that states your REC number and the certificate you'll issue, right at the top, answers that question before it's asked instead of leaving a homeowner to go digging for your details separately.

What to charge in 2026

Irish electrical pricing varies by region and job type, but these are a fair starting point for 2026, all excluding VAT:

• Hourly rate: roughly €40–€150, with around €65 typical for most domestic work.
• Day rate: roughly €220–€500, averaging around €280 — Dublin and other cities tend toward the higher end.
• Call-out fee: commonly €120–€165, usually covering the first hour, rising 20–30% for evenings, weekends and emergencies.
• Consumer unit (fuse board) upgrade or repair: €130–€3,000, averaging around €680.
• Extra sockets or switches: €150–€2,000, averaging around €270.
• Indoor lighting installation: €100–€2,500, averaging around €400.
• Electrical safety check and certification: €250–€1,200, averaging around €550.
• A full house rewire: anywhere from a few hundred euro for a small patch job up to €15,000+ for a large property, averaging around €10,100 for a typical three-bed semi.

These are labour-and-materials job prices, not take-home margin — build in your van, tool and CPD costs, and the call-outs that don't convert, before you settle on your own number.

The VAT rule that trips up more Irish quotes than it should

Ireland's standard VAT rate is 23%. Construction services, including electrical work on fixtures in private dwellings — wiring to powerpoints, fuseboards and lampholders — generally qualify for the 13.5% reduced rate instead. But that reduced rate is "subject to the two-thirds rule", and that's the part most electricians have never had reason to work through by hand.

Revenue's rule is simple once you see it worked: when a job combines goods (the materials you supply) with a service (your labour), compare the cost of those materials against two-thirds of the total job price, excluding VAT. If your materials cost more than that two-thirds threshold, the goods' rate applies to the whole job — which for most electrical components means the standard 23% rate, not the reduced 13.5% one. If materials stay under the threshold, the service rate (13.5%, for qualifying fixture work) applies to the entire job instead, materials included.

There's a second trap worth knowing separately: even fixture work that passes the two-thirds test doesn't get the reduced rate if it falls outside the fixture scope Revenue defines. Wiring up an electric cooker, specifically, is called out as standard rated at 23% regardless. A kitchen job that mixes socket and lighting circuits with a new cooker point genuinely has two VAT rates sitting inside it — splitting that onto separate lines is more accurate than guessing one rate for the whole invoice, and it's the kind of detail that holds up if Revenue ever asks.

None of this is tax advice, and the correct treatment depends on the exact mix of goods and labour in your own contract — Revenue's VAT rates database, or your accountant, is the place to confirm anything borderline. But knowing the shape of the rule means you can quote the right rate from the start, instead of discovering the gap when a customer or Revenue questions the invoice later.

A worked example

A consumer unit upgrade with three new kitchen sockets, quoted the right way — VAT worked out using Revenue's own two-thirds method, not guessed:

Materials for the board and sockets come to roughly €335 — well under two-thirds of the €880 subtotal (€586.67), so the 13.5% reduced rate applies to the whole job rather than the 23% standard rate. If this job had also included wiring a new cooker circuit, that portion would sit at 23% regardless, quoted as its own line. REC registration and Completion Certificate confirmed on the quote. Valid for 21 days. 30% deposit for materials, balance on completion and handover of the certificate.

Five details that get Irish electrical quotes accepted faster

• Put your Safe Electric number on the quote, not just the invoice. Irish homeowners are increasingly used to checking this before they'll even consider hiring someone — stating it upfront skips a phone call a cautious customer would otherwise make before booking you in.
• Name the certificate, not just "it'll be certified". "Completion Certificate issued on handover" is a specific, checkable line. A vague promise of certification is exactly the kind of thing that turns into a dispute once the invoice lands.
• Show your VAT rate, and why it applies. A quote that states "13.5% reduced rate, subject to the two-thirds rule" reads like it came from someone who understands Revenue's rules. Most customers won't know the detail, but they'll notice the quote looks considered rather than guessed.
• Make accepting effortless. A homeowner comparing three REC quotes will pick whichever is easiest to say yes to — one tap on their phone beats print, sign, scan, every time.
• Follow up once, properly. A short "happy to talk through the consumer unit options" a few days later recovers jobs that got buried under two other quotes while the homeowner was still deciding.

The fastest way to do all of this

Working out the right VAT rate by hand, on top of itemising the board, the sockets and the certification, is exactly the kind of thing that gets skipped when you're quoting between call-outs — which is how a 23%-rated job ends up invoiced at 13.5%, or the other way round.

This is what QuoteRocket is for. Describe the job in plain English — "consumer unit upgrade, three new kitchen sockets, test and cert" — and it turns that into a branded, itemised PDF quote in under a minute, priced automatically in euro for Irish customers. Your customer accepts it with one tap on their phone, and an accepted quote becomes an invoice in one click, with the board, the sockets, the certification and the VAT line all itemised instead of folded into one guessed total.

Whatever tool you use to produce it, the principles hold: state your Safe Electric registration plainly, name the certificate you'll issue, work out your VAT rate properly rather than defaulting to one number for everything, and make saying yes effortless.

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