Employee rights: Workers can claim five days’ leave to care for sick family members or housemates

A right for employees to claim up to five days of unpaid leave a year to help with medical care for family members or housemates came into effect on Monday.

The entitlement is one of the first provisions of the Work Life Balance Act to come into effect along with an extension to two years of the period during which mothers can take one hour breaks to breastfeed or express.

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions welcomed the measures, although it has been critical of the failure to make the days of leave paid.

“The EU Directive which gave rise to this did not make that mandatory although it was recommended,” said Laura Bambrick, the organisation’s head of social policy and employment affairs.

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“Unfortunately the Government has chosen not to do that but there are alternative, existing force majeure provisions that allow workers to take up to three paid days in one year and up to five over a 36-month period,” she said.

“These won’t help in cases where your child or parent has a hospital appointment, they are more about that call from the school or from a neighbour saying something has gone wrong but people should be aware of them.

“They don’t apply to housemates, though, just close family members, where the new legislation does so if you are sharing a house with someone who needs to be taken to hospital then that opportunity is there now.”

The changes to the regulation in relation to breastfeeding at work, she said, represent a significant improvement to the existing situation.

“The provision has allowed for breaks during the first six months after birth but that came in when paid maternity leave was just 12 weeks so women would return to work and have three months during which they could take these breaks.

“But the paid leave has since been extended to six months and so women faced the prospect of returning to work at that stage and finding there was no provision to help them with this. They were having to either give up breastfeeding sooner than they intended or take unpaid maternity leave if they could afford to.

“So this is good for women and for the many employers who are crying out to get women back into the workforce,” she said.

Announcing the implementation of the measures, Minister for Equality, Roderic O’Gorman said the legislation “helping make sure that our work lives reflect the reality of our personal lives, particularly for parents and carers.

“By extending breastfeeding breaks to two years after the birth of the child, we can support women returning to work after maternity leave to continue to breastfeed, in line with best practices from a public health perspective. Normalising breastfeeding in the workplace is of benefit to mothers, babies and wider society.’

“The new right to leave for medical care purposes will give parents and carers access to a flexible short-term form of unpaid leave, providing certainty at difficult moments, should they need it,” he said.

Another of the Act’s main provisions, the right to request remote working, was recently the subject of a consultation process and the WRC is now working to compile the code of practice. It is expected to come into effect after the summer when provisions relating to leave for victims of domestic violence are also scheduled to be implemented.