Do not assume an automatic result. Have the actual employment history, applicable qualifying period and current knowledge assessed on the individual facts. A vendor certificate and specialized knowledge point in opposite directions. Industry certifications are built to be portable and comparable between employers, which is what makes them valuable to the people who hold them and useless as proof that knowledge is special to one organization. What the employer built, adapted or does differently is where the answer lives.
Separate the questions that need review
Explain the actual dates and what knowledge the applicant acquired and applied. Neither ignoring the leave nor assuming it resolves the whole case provides a reliable eligibility analysis. Absence enters this analysis at two points rather than one, and they deserve separate answers.
The first is arithmetical: whether one continuous year of qualifying employment abroad falls inside the three years preceding the request, served with a qualifying related entity. The second is substantive: whether the applicant currently holds knowledge meeting the standard, which turns on what they did and on how far the work has moved since, not on the length of the gap. Someone returning to an unchanged process may hold what they held before; someone returning to a rebuilt one may not, whatever an earlier record shows.
Establish what changed during the absence before assuming either result.