The Irish Cancer Society (ICS) has called for new legislation to allow women to defer maternity leave while being treated and recovering from cancer.
The ‘Leave our Leave’ video campaign launched in Leinster House on Thursday.
The legislation that covers this issue is the Maternity Protection Act 2004 and it stipulates that anyone who is diagnosed with cancer or any other serious illness during pregnancy must use their maternity leave to cover their treatment.
The only way maternity leave can be postponed is in the case of a child being hospitalised.
The ICS said 60 women each year are impacted by "this unfair legislative anomaly".
The Leave our Leave campaign seeks "immediate legislative changes so that no one in the future will face the injustice of forfeiting their leave while they go through gruelling treatment".
Created by Persuasion, the campaign video features mothers Mary Canavan, Emma McGuinness and Erica Tierney telling their stories of what it's like to be diagnosed with cancer when pregnant or on maternity leave.
They describe what it feels like for a new mum to be taken away from her baby for life saving treatment while her family have to care for both of them.
Speaking at the launch of the campaign, Irish Cancer Society CEO, Averil Power said: “We have met with Minister Roderic O’Gorman, whose department this issue comes under, and have had some positive discussions around making the necessary legislative amendments to ensure maternity leave doesn’t expire while a woman is undergoing life-saving treatment – yet nothing has happened to move this on. Mothers shouldn’t be forced to use up their maternity leave while going through harrowing cancer treatment."
Emma McGuinness from Oranmore, Co Galway, was in the early stages of pregnancy when she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Ruairí was born at 36 weeks, and he spent two weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit in Galway before he came home.
One week later Emma started chemotherapy which she had every two weeks for six months. Her maternity leave ended two days before her final treatment in November 2021 and she then went onto sick leave.
Ms McGuinness sad: “Your maternity leave is important and it should be protected, it should be spent with your baby. I know from my first maternity leave that it’s not easy and it’s probably the hardest you’ll ever work but it is such a precious time and it’s time you can’t get back. Unfortunately, for Ruairí’s first 6 months I was in and out of hospital or just too unwell to look after him on my own and we missed out on that."
She added: "If I knew at the time that once my active treatment was over I would have 6 months of maternity leave it would have saved me so much heartbreak, guilt and trauma. To feel like you were being protected as you went through this and that there was light at the end of the tunnel would be a real mental and emotional support. As anyone who has experienced cancer knows, when your active treatment finishes you still have a lot of healing to do.”
