No 100 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
These Regulations come into operation on 15/3/15 and they apply to and modify existing powers in the 1996 Employment Rights (NI) Order to allow the making of regulations to give an employee who meets the eligibility criteria entitlement to statutory adoption leave, paternity leave and shared parental leave if that employee has a child born with the help of a surrogate and the employee is a parental order parent.
A parental order parent is someone who on the day of the child’s birth intends to apply for a parental order under section 54 of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 with another person in respect of the child and they expect the court to make such an order; or someone who obtains such an order.
Articles 107A and 107B of the 1996 Order give employees who sat 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.
Articles 107G and 107I of the 1996 Order (inserted by the 2015 Act) 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 special 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 1996 Order confers power to make regulations entitling an employee who satisfies specified conditions to avail of paternity leave in respect of an adoption. These Regulations make 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 1996 Order to allow the making of regulations which provide that an employee does not have an entitlement to paternity leave respect of a birth under that Article where the employee has the right to paternity leave under Article 112B or to adoption leave under 107A.