Why women with cancer are campaigning for deferred maternity leave
IT SHOULD be one of the happiest times in a woman’s life but around 60 women every year find themselves facing a cancer diagnosis during pregnancy.
But despite the fact that they are ill, they are forced to use their maternity leave to get treatment for their illness, as the Maternity Protection Act of 2004 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.
Now the Irish Cancer Society has launched a campaign that highlights the plight of these women. The ‘Leave our Leave’ campaign calls for an amendment to the current legislation that would allow a woman’s maternity leave to be deferred if she should find herself in this position.
This unfair legislative anomaly affects around 60 women in Ireland every year and only emerges once they try to pause their maternity leave while they are being treated for cancer.
The campaign is seeing immediate change so that no women will face the injustice of forfeiting their leave while they go through gruelling treatment.
Irish Cancer Society director of advocacy and external affairs, Rachel Morrogh says: ‘We have written to Minister Roderic O’Gorman, whose department this issue comes under, and appealed to him to make the necessary legislative amendments to ensure maternity leave doesn’t expire while a woman is undergoing
life-saving treatment. The women affected are vulnerable and traumatised by such happy and sad life events coinciding.
‘Being able to keep their maternity leave until the end of their treatment would go some way to being able to claw back special bonding time from cancer. This is a straightforward and common-sense issue and we hope that swift action is taken by the Government now this issue has been brought to their attention.’
Erica Tierney from Kildare received a breast cancer diagnosis while 30 weeks pregnant. She then discovered that she could not bank and save her maternity leave for a time when she could use it to care for and bond with her baby after her treatment.
‘I had a mastectomy at 33 weeks pregnant in October 2019 and my little girl Róise was delivered a little early in November 2019,’ she says. ‘After just three weeks of recuperation, I then went on to have chemotherapy from November to March and radiotherapy in April. I thought I would be on illness benefit and keep my maternity leave for when I was no longer too ill to look after my baby fully.
‘Because I had to go on illness benefit after my maternity leave ended I couldn’t postpone my 16 weeks’ unpaid leave either and lost that too. My maternity leave ended the week after I finished treatment. I was really sick, totally bald and hardly able to shuffle to the shop let alone go back to work. Yet that was my maternity leave gone.’
The Irish Cancer Society is calling on elected representatives to support the ‘Leave Our Leave’ campaign and to contact the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth to request an amendment to the current legislation.
It is possible for paternity leave to be postponed if the father becomes ill, under the Paternity Leave and Benefit Act 2016 and the society is urging the Government to ensure women are entitled to the same benefit by amending the Act.
‘They need to claw back special bonding time’