personally I think it depends on when the maternity leave finishes. eg mat leave October 2021 to October 2022, doesn't leave much time to take holiday. but if the maternity leave finished in the first half of 2022, they have 6 months to take their annual leave from 2021. So in short, if it isn't laid out in a policy use common sense and agree with the employee what would be reasonable. eg use by April 2023. Although I can't say if there any restrictions legally, my company is quite relaxed about this and would be happy to follow this kind of process, but that may not work in every company. Do bear in mind that you're setting a precedent, so it would need to work for future similar situations too.

Hi Fiona, there are no laws about when an employee can or can't take their accrued annual leave following maternity leave (other than of course that they can't be taken concurrently) so it is a matter of company discretion. A company is entirely within their rights however to stipulate when an employee can or can't take annual leave.

It sounds like this employee has already started back at work following maternity leave, is that right? And presumably has not been given any instruction so far as to how and when they need to use their accrued annual leave? They may already have ideas in mind about how they want to use their extra leave, so it may be a slightly more difficult conversation at this stage than it would have been before they returned from maternity leave, however as a first step, I would suggest coming up with a proposal that would work for the company and presenting it to the employee with a view to working together to come up with a mutually agreeable plan. Do you have any company policy regarding carrying over annual leave? Could that be applied here? Companies often require that if leave is carried over from the previous year, it is used within the first 2 months of the year for example, so you could apply that policy and ask that she uses it within the first xx months of her return?

In reply to Gemma:

Thank you, that all makes sense!

In reply to Helen:

Thanks Helen, that is really helpful.
We are based in Dublin but I can't see any laws in Ireland about this specific thing either.
In this case, the employee has already started back working following maternity leave so we will speak with her about how it can work best for both sides. I realise now it's something for me to add to our maternity leave policy so that it is outlined clearly for all involved in future.