Attorney General’s Office (General Conditions of Service) Regulations, 2025

The Attorney General's Office has made a full set of general conditions of service for its staff, with the concurrence of the Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs. The regulations run to eleven parts and four schedules, covering appointment through to discipline.

Retirement is set at a single age. A member appointed on pensionable terms has a pensionable age of seventy — with no split between earlier and later appointees of the kind that appears in the Judicial Service and Officers of Parliament amendments made the same year. The Board may allow service beyond seventy in stretches of no more than a year at a time, with seventy-five as the hard limit. A member may ask to retire any time after sixty on three months' notice, and the Board may require retirement on or after sixty, on medical unfitness certified by a board appointed by the Secretary for Health, or for inefficiency, unsuitability, twelve months in a lower-graded post, abolition of the post, reorganisation, failure to be placed after secondment, or where retirement is in the interests of the Office.

Leave is the part most staff will read. Vacation leave accrues at three days a month and can be taken with full pay after twelve continuous months of service; on leaving, a member is paid cash in lieu of accrued leave up to a maximum of 120 days, and the cash equivalent is payable to a member's estate on death. Annual leave of up to twelve days a year may be granted for short breaks. Sick leave runs to ninety days on full pay and ninety on half pay in any one year, with up to three days available without a medical certificate.

Maternity leave is ninety-eight days on full pay for a member with at least a year's service, taken no earlier than forty-five days and no later than twenty-one days before the expected delivery date. Three periods are granted on full pay and two further periods on half pay across total service, with only one period in any twenty-four months. A member who does not qualify may take ninety days' unpaid vacation leave or use accrued leave, and may switch to full pay if she becomes eligible mid-leave. A nursing mother gets two hours a day of breastfeeding time for six months from birth, combinable with normal breaks. Maternity leave does not cost a member her eligibility for advancement or promotion, and is cancelled — without counting against the three permissible periods — in the event of stillbirth, miscarriage or death within the leave period.

Special leave of up to twelve days a year covers sitting examinations, enforced absence after contact with an infectious disease, attending court on subpoena, attending a recognised association's conference, detention for police questioning, the death of a spouse, parent, child or legal dependant, and other justifiable compassionate grounds. On a death in service the Office contributes to funeral expenses, which may include a casket, dressing of the body, transport to the place of burial or cremation, and a determined amount for food for mourners.

On money, probation lasts up to a year and may be extended once by six months. After two years' service a member may be considered for housing, motor vehicle, training, and funeral and bereavement loans, which the Board may run through a revolving fund. A salary advance of up to one month's net basic salary, excluding allowances, may be authorised in exceptional and compelling circumstances and is recovered from salary. All members receive a housing allowance at rates the Board determines, and those without personal issue vehicles may receive a transport allowance.

Discipline ends at the Labour Court. A member in the middle or senior grade aggrieved by a determination or penalty has twenty-one days to appeal to the Labour Court or apply there for review; noting an appeal does not suspend the penalty. A junior grade member has the same twenty-one days to ask the Office for an internal review or to appeal to the Labour Court, and the disciplinary authority must forward a review request to the Board within fourteen days.

One inconsistency to note: the instrument's header cites Chapter 7:20 while its operative words are made under section 24 of the Attorney General's Office Act [Chapter 7:19]. Section 16 also runs straight from its opening words into subsection (2) without a numbered subsection (1). The four schedules — promotion principles, eligibility for manpower development leave, acts of misconduct, and the misconduct report form — set out detail this summary does not cover.