We can’t just trundle on, maternity leave must be extended now

The Covid-19 emergency has fundamentally changed the nature and time that mothers spend with newborn babies.

On June 11, the National Women’s Council of Ireland submitted a petition, signed by more than 28,000 people, to the then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, which called for an extension of the 12-week maternity leave and pay.

The now Tánaiste said he would give a full and meaningful consideration to the request.

But after a month of inaction and pleas falling on deaf ears, I joined the National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI) and a group of exasperated mothers who were demonstrating outside Leinster House on Tuesday morning in support of this call, and subsequently raised it on the floor of the Dáil.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin replied by saying his intention was to ‘do the right thing’.

The women of this State need and deserve a firmer commitment than that.

When Micheál announced his new Cabinet, at the end of last month, I made it clear that Sinn Féin would provide the most effective opposition in the State.

They weren’t empty words; we mean it.

I hope that our contributions, so far, have demonstrated that we will continue on the floor of the Dáil to speak up for, and relay the realities of, people’s lives.

We will press this Government into action, bring forward solutions and find ways to do things better. That is our role as leaders of the opposition.

Last month, the persistent and determined campaigning by women to end the exclusion from the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme of those returning from maternity leave forced the caretaker government to act. Sinn Féin brought forward solutions on their behalf, which were adopted by the government.

So, whether it is Pearse Doherty standing up to banks using this crisis to profit from mortgage holders or Eoin Ó Broin holding the Housing Minister to account to deliver on his promises, we have a frontbench team that will bring constructive solutions to the table.

On this issue of extending maternity leave, the programme for government expresses the will to ‘extend paid parental leave for parents, to allow them to spend more time with their baby during its first year’.

While this was as vague as the rest of the woolly commitments laid out in the programme for government, its inclusion did raise the expectation – among women in particular – that action on this issue was imminent. And imminent it must be. Extending maternity leave is the correct thing to do, but that is even more so the case in the context of this pandemic. Why? Women have given birth without their partner present, they have faced the first few months of motherhood without access to the important supports, while babies have missed out on important medical checks. This has resulted in huge stress and in some cases, even unwarranted feelings of guilt. The formative weeks and months of life are the most important time for babies and their parents.

But new mothers have had that time consumed by stress and disruption arising from the Covid-19 crisis. It has stolen what is normally such a memorable time of peace and love between a mother and child.

MATERNITY leave in this State has long been unfit for purpose. It does not meet the needs of mothers and babies in 21st century Ireland.

But this crisis needs to force the Government’s hand now. New mothers who were on maternity leave during the Covid-19 crisis need a solution now. That’s not all. Mothers are already on the dreaded countdown to returning to work with the additional stress looming large of having to find suitable childcare arrangements when capacity within the childcare sector has been slashed dramatically.

We can’t allow a situation where mothers are forced to take unpaid leave or, worse, left to face the real prospect of losing their jobs.

We can’t just trundle on as we were – mothers and babies need the extension now or those precious bonding and formative moments will be lost and gone forever.

This Government needs to deliver on its promise and give mothers peace of mind.