The payment response moves the number, or nothing does
The Construction Contracts Act 2013 gives the payer a narrow, dated window to contest a payment claim. Outside it the claimed sum is what falls due, whatever the payer thinks the work was worth.
QScope Team · 5 June 2026 · 6 min read
An interim payment claim on an Irish job is not the end of the conversation. The payer can answer it. But the Construction Contracts Act 2013 does not leave the timing to habit or goodwill. It fixes a window, and it counts in calendar days.
Twenty one days from the payment claim date
Where the payer wishes to contest all or part of the amount claimed, the response has to be served within twenty one days of the payment claim date. The response must state the amount the payer proposes to pay and the basis on which it is calculated. A bare rejection is not a response. A figure with no reasoning behind it is not one either.
- The proposed sum. What the payer says is actually due, stated as a number.
- The basis. Why it differs from the claim, item by item, so the difference can be tested rather than asserted.
- The date. Served inside twenty one days of the payment claim date, counted as calendar days, weekends included.
What silence does
If the payer serves nothing inside the window, the amount claimed is the amount that falls due. There is no separate step where value is revisited for that cycle. The claim stands, and the default position under the Act is that it is payable no later than thirty days after the payment claim date. A payer who lets the window pass has not deferred the argument. The payer has lost it for that month.
Why the window is short
The Act exists to keep money moving down the chain. A payer who could sit on a claim indefinitely could stop the chain, so Parliament in the Oireachtas chose certainty over comfort. Twenty one days is enough to price a claim properly and not enough to let it drift. The response you draft in week one is worth far more than the objection you raise in week four, because by week four there may be nothing left to object to.
RIAI and public works
On an RIAI form or a Public Works Contract the machinery of certification sits alongside the Act, but it cannot shorten the payee's protection. The contract may set out who assesses and how, the Act sets the deadline and the consequence of missing it. Read both together and the response is a routine, dated task rather than a scramble.
The discipline
Log the payment claim date the moment the claim lands and work the twenty one days from it. Build the response from the same measured figures the claim was built from, so the difference is real and defensible. The response that goes out on time, with a figure and a reason, is the only one that changes what gets paid.
QScope counts the twenty one day response window from the payment claim date and flags any claim the payer has left unanswered, so nothing falls due by default.