6. For rule 3 of the principal rules there shall be substituted the following rule:—
“3.—(1) Where a person becomes or has become a pensionable employee of a Northern Ireland employing authority after having ceased to be or to be deemed to be a contributory employee or local Act contributor and these rules have become applicable in relation to him, the authority or body by whom he was employed may, within three months after the date on which they are informed by the Northern Ireland employing authority of his notification that he desires these rules to apply to him, exercise in relation to him any discretion which, with a view to increasing the benefits payable to him, it would have been open to them to exercise at the time when he left their employment if he had then retired and had been entitled to a retirement pension under regulation 5 of the benefits regulations, or (if that regulation was not applicable to him) to any corresponding benefit provided under the superannuation provisions which were applicable to him in his former employment.
(2) A decision made in the exercise of any discretion under the last preceding paragraph shall be subject to the limitations and restrictions (if any) and to the right of appeal (if any) to which it would have been subject if the discretion had been exercised on the person's retirement in the circumstances aforesaid.
(3) Where a discretion has been exercised under paragraph (1) of this rule the service reckonable, immediately before he left his employment, by the person in whose favour the discretion has been exercised shall be deemed to have been correspondingly increased and the transfer value payable in respect of that person shall be calculated accordingly.
(4) Any increase in service, if attributable to a decision under this rule to increase the benefits payable to the person otherwise than by any notional increase or extension of the service reckonable for the purpose of calculating those benefits, or by treating any specified period of noncontributing service as contributing service, or, under a local Act scheme, by similarly converting service of one category to service of another category, shall be ascertained by converting a higher rate of benefit into years of contributing service or service for the purposes of the relevant local Act scheme in the manner in which fractions of remuneration are converted into years of contributing service under subsection (4) of section 2 of the Act of 1953.
(5) Where the amount of any transfer value payable under the last preceding rule is increased in consequence of the exercise by an authority or body of any power conferred upon them by paragraph (1) of this rule, that authority or body shall repay the amount of the said increase to the superannuation fund out of which the transfer value is payable.”