The Employment Rights (Northern Ireland) Order 1996 (Application of Articles 107A, 107B, 107G, 107I, 112A and 112B to Parental Order Cases) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2015

Explanatory Note

(This note is not part of the Regulations)

Articles 107A and 107B of the Employment Rights (Northern Ireland) Order 1996 (“the Order”) give employees who satisfy prescribed conditions the right to take ordinary adoption leave and additional adoption leave. They also allow an employee who is entitled to ordinary or additional adoption leave to curtail that leave to access shared parental leave. These Regulations provide that those Articles have effect in relation to parental order parents. A parental order parent is a person who has applied, or intends to apply, with another person, under section 54 of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 for a parental order in respect of a child or someone who has such an order.

Articles 107G and 107I of the Order contain powers to make regulations entitling an employee who is adopting a child under the law of any part of the United Kingdom, or has a specified relationship with such an adopter, to take shared parental leave. These Regulations make the necessary modifications to those Articles to provide for them to have effect in relation to parental order parents.

Article 112B of the Order confers power to make regulations entitling an employee who satisfies specified conditions to avail of paternity leave. These Regulations make the necessary modifications to Article 112B to provide for it to have effect in relation to parental order parents. In addition, these Regulations modify Article 112A of the Order to allow the making of regulations which provide that an employee does not have an entitlement to paternity leave under that Article where the employee has the right to paternity leave under Article 112B or to adoption leave under Article 107A of the Order.

An impact assessment has not been prepared for these Regulations. These Regulations are part of a package of legislative measures and the relevant impacts were assessed within the document ‘Sharing parental rights, extending flexibility at work – public consultation’, published in May 2013 (www.delni.gov.uk/index/consultation-zone/archived-consultations/archived-consultations-2013/working-parents-rights.htm), and supplemented by a further publication in April 2014 (www.delni.gov.uk/index/publications/equality-good-relations/shared-parental-leave-and-pay.htm).