Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left)
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218. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform if a review of the discriminatory impact of changes in public sector sick leave entitlements which calculated pregnancy sick leave as part of overall sick leave entitlements, backdated for four years has taken place; his plans to eliminate this inequality; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [1748/15]

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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The Public Service Management (Sick Leave) Regulations 2014 (S.I. No. 124 of 2014) set out the provisions of the new Public Service Sick Leave Scheme.

The Sick Leave Regulations provides that an individual's sick leave record will be reviewed over a 4-year period in order to determine how much paid sick leave they will have access to.  Reviewing records over a period of 4 years is generally considered to be a more flexible way of providing support to employees during periods of illness. The alternative,  providing more limited access to sick pay in a shorter time frame, is often more restrictive.

The retention of the 4 year look back was agreed by the Labour Court and reflects the practice that previously existed in the majority of the Public Service.  The rationale for maintaining this provision was to ensure that individuals' sick leave records were not completely cleared on day one of the new Sick Leave Scheme. This would have undermined a fundamental purpose of the new Sick Leave Scheme, which is to reduce the unsustainable cost of sick leave, by allowing individuals who had exhausted their access to paid sick leave under previous sick leave arrangements to have access to the full allowance of paid sick leave under the new Scheme.

Regulations 19 and 20 provide additional access to paid sick leave for pregnancy related illness and were designed to comply with the European Court of Justice ruling in North Western Health Board v McKenna (C-191/03).

In the McKenna case, the Court considered that it was not discriminatory for pregnancy related absences to be offset against the maximum number of days' paid sick leave to which a female employee is entitled. The Court also confirmed, however, that although it was not discriminatory to record the number of pregnancy related sick leave days, a woman should still have access to the minimum payment that she would have received if she had not suffered a pregnancy related illness.

In accordance with this, Regulation 20 provides that any pregnancy related absence for which a female employee has been paid at the half rate of pay will not count towards her paid sick leave limits.  In addition, Regulation 19 provides that a female employee who suffers from a pregnancy related illness will never receive less than the half rate of pay.

A further arrangement was recently introduced, in line with advice from the Attorney General's Office, to ensure that women who did not previously have access to sick leave at half pay (e.g. teachers), do not exhaust their access to paid sick leave because of pregnancy related illness.

I have committed to undertake a formal review of the new Sick Leave Scheme after a full year of its operation to identify and changes that will enhance the operation of the Scheme.  I will consider all issues raised in the course of the year as part of that review.