The European Union’s highest court has fined Ireland €1.54 million for delays in fully transposing the EU’s 2019 directive on work-life balance for parents and carers.
The directive was due to have been fully transposed by the middle of 2022 but the legislation required to complete the process was not enacted until last year.
The fine imposed by the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) is the fourth imposed on Ireland since 2020 for failing to transpose a directive in the anticipated time frame following similar issues with regard to recent directives on anti-money laundering measures, audio visual services and electronic communications.
The total fines imposed during the period now comes to just over €13 million.
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The work-life balance directive was intended to extend a number of entitlements to carers and parents with regard to time off work to allow them meet caring or support obligations, mainly to family members.
Laura Bambrick, head of social policy and employment at the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, said part of the problem in this instance was that the Government sought to go beyond what was required of it in its legislation and this, combined with complications associated with the pandemic, helped to prolong the process.
“The directive had a number of elements to it,” she says. “It introduced paternity leave, paid parents’ leave, it gave all workers the right of five days unpaid care leave for serious medical reasons, if a close relative or friend fell ill. It also allowed parents and carers to request flexible working and it was those last two that were late being transposed.
“Ireland has tended to be bad at transposing,” she continued. “Being late, blocking, diluting the transposition. In this case, though, the period for transposition largely coincided with Covid and Ireland was one of the dozen countries given warnings about late transposition.
“What was specific to Ireland was that our work-life balance Bill became a miscellaneous piece of legislation, a lot of other bits including improvements to breastfeeding breaks, the introduction of domestic violence leave and the right to request remote working for all workers were all added.”
In a statement the Department for Children, Disability and Equality said it takes its responsibilities seriously regarding transposition of EU directives but that “there were particular circumstances which delayed transposition of this directive, leading ultimately to today’s penalty”.
It said many of the provisions required by the directive had been introduced before this deadline.
Among other factors, it pointed to the pandemic as having contributed to delays and said the decision to attempt to deal with the issue of remote working had added to the time required to pass the required legislation.
“Ireland has made progress on reducing delays in transposing EU directives and is currently ranked second best overall in the EU, alongside Finland, in terms of timely transposition of EU Single Market directives,” it said.
