Women will be given the option to defer their maternity leave in cases of serious physical or mental illness, under plans due to be approved by the Cabinet.
Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman will bring the legislation to the Cabinet on Wednesday, after he last year tasked officials with examining the measures.
It follows the Irish Cancer Society’s Leave Our Leave campaign, highlighting women who spent their maternity leave receiving medical treatment.
The proposed changes would allow someone postpone their maternity leave by up to 52 weeks.
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Currently, under the Maternity Protection Act, a pause on maternity leave is allowed only in case of a hospitalisation of a child.
Alongside these plans, the Minister will also introduce a statutory entitlement for members of the Oireachtas to take maternity leave.
The Irish Cancer Society previously estimated that every year, 60 women in Ireland go through a cancer diagnosis while pregnant or post-partum. These women are unable to defer their maternity leave when ill, so their maternity leave is spent receiving life-saving treatment, taking away from their time with the newborn baby
The society has said it is “unjust” that men can defer their paternity leave if they are sick, but women cannot.
The Maternity Protection Act 1994 and the Maternity Protection Act 2004 provide a pregnant employee with six months of paid maternity leave and an additional 16 weeks of unpaid leave, alongside other entitlements such as breastfeeding breaks.
Under that legislation, women can postpone maternity leave if the child is hospitalised.
The Irish Times previously reported on the case of Emma McGuinness from Oranmore, Co Galway, who described how she was in the early stages of pregnancy when she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Her son, Ruairí, was born at 36 weeks and he spent two weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit before going home. A week later Ms McGuinness started chemotherapy, which she had every two weeks for six months. “If I knew at the time that once my active treatment was over I would have six months of maternity leave, it would have saved me so much heartbreak, guilt and trauma,” she said.
Her maternity leave ended four days before her last chemotherapy session.
“My arms were so sore, I couldn’t hold my baby ... I remember my mom coming in, that was one of the hardest days, she brought him in for a cuddle. He was only maybe seven or eight weeks old and she handed him to me and I was like, I can’t physically hold him.
“So, in what way is that maternity leave? It was just horrific, you know.”
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