The Department for the Economy has set its policy to extend statutory parental bereavement leave and pay to cover miscarriage before the end of the 24th week of pregnancy, with day one rights from April 2026. The Minister intends to progress regulations with “a minimum of delay”, with Executive support and draft affirmative procedure in the Assembly.
The Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Act (Northern Ireland) 2022 introduced a statutory entitlement to two weeks’ parental bereavement leave and statutory payment for eligible working parents following a stillbirth after 24 weeks, or the death of a child under 18. However, the Act also placed a legal duty on the Department to extend those regulations to cases of miscarriage and to remove the previous 26 week qualifying period for pay so that parental bereavement pay (including for miscarriage, stillbirth and child death) would become a day one right. It had to do this by 6 April 2026, and despite a consultation on these expanded rights taking place in 2022, the Department has only now released its response and plan for implementation. Northern Ireland will now be the first region of the UK to put in place specific miscarriage leave, see our previous insight on this here.
Below, we explore the key features of the expanded rights.
The scheme will mirror existing parental bereavement provisions for stillbirth (pregnancy loss after 24 weeks) and death of a child under 18 years. Eligible employees...
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