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- Employment Case Law – each month we review a number of interesting employment law cases and consider their implications for organisations. This month we look at the Probation Period - What Managers Need to Know. Read more >>>
- Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) Decisions – each month we look at and review the decisions from the WRC. This provides a valuable insight into the types of discrimination cases before the WRC and the decisions that are issued. Read more >>>
- What to Keep an Eye Out For – what is new, changing, potentially changing or what you may have missed. Read more >>>
Parental Leave
A proposal to extend parental leave from 18 to 26 weeks has been referred to the Oireachtas Committee on Justice and Equality following a debate in the Dáil.
The Parental leave Acts, 1998-2013 set out to provide unpaid leave to natural and adoptive parents of children of a certain age and also to persons acting in loco parentis to same. Although there is no statutory definition of loco parentis, the expression is generally interpreted as meaning a person acting in place of a parent, e.g. a foster parent.
Eligibility for parental leave depends on 3 factors. These are:
- The Employee’s status as a parent,
- The age of the relevant child in respect of whom leave is being taken, and,
- The Employee meeting minimum service requirements.
Leave may be availed of in respect of a relevant child:
- Aged under 8 years of age, or
- Within two years of an adoption order where the child is adopted between the ages of 6 and 8 years, or
- Aged under 16 years in the case of a child with a disability/ long term illness, or earlier where the child ceases to have a disability/ long term illness.