22. (1) An employer shall not penalise, or threaten penalisation of, an employee for proposing to exercise or having exercised his or her entitlement to paternity leave.

(2) For the purposes of this section, penalisation of an employee includes—

(a) dismissal, or the threat of dismissal, of the employee,

(b) unfair treatment of the employee, including selection for redundancy, and

(c) an unfavourable change in the terms or conditions of employment of the employee.

(3) If a penalisation of an employee, in contravention of subsection (1), constitutes a dismissal of the employee, as referred to in subsection (2)(a), the employee may institute proceedings under the Act of 1977 in respect of that dismissal.