No 149 The Maternity Allowance (Curtailment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2015
These Regulations enable a woman to end her Maternity Allowance early so that an eligible person (a spouse, civil partner, partner or the child’s father) can take the remaining number of untaken weeks of Maternity Allowance as shared parental pay and/or shared parental leave.
The Maternity Allowance (Curtailment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2015 and the Statutory Maternity Pay (Curtailment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2015 (“the DSD Regulations”) refer to and operate alongside two sets of regulations introduced by the Department for Employment and Learning (‘the DEL Regulations’). The DEL Regulations are the Statutory Shared Parental Pay (General) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2015 (SR 2015 No. 94) and the Shared Parental Leave Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2015 (SR 2015 No. 93). For this new system of shared parental leave and pay to be effective, it is necessary for both the DSD Regulations and the DEL Regulations to come into operation together. They will come into operation on 15 March 2015. The DSD Regulations cannot be viewed in isolation, as together with the DEL Regulations they set out a new system of shared parental leave and pay.