The Irish Cancer Society is calling on the Government to change current legislation that prevents women from deferring their maternity leave while they are being treated and recovering from cancer.
The 'Leave our Leave' video campaign, which was launched at Leinster House, aims to highlight the issues facing women who are diagnosed with cancer during pregnancy.
The Maternity Protection Act 2004 states 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.
This law currently affects around 60 women each year, according to the Irish Cancer Society.
It said the issue emerges once the person tries to pause their maternity leave while they are being treated for cancer.
The campaign video features mothers Mary Canavan, Emma McGuinness and Erica Tierney telling their stories of what it is like to be diagnosed with cancer when pregnant or on maternity leave.
Speaking at the launch of the campaign, Irish Cancer Society CEO, Averil Power said: "Mothers shouldn't be forced to use up their maternity leave while going through harrowing cancer 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 straight-forward and common-sense issue, and we hope that swift action is taken by Government now this issue has been brought to their attention.
"We need to repair the injustice that prevents women deferring their maternity leave following cancer treatment and recovery."
'Incredibly unjust'
Ms Power said that under current legislation it is not possible for women to defer their maternity leave until after they have recovered "even though for paternity leave men can do that".
"We think that is just incredibly unjust."
Ms Power said every week someone in Ireland is diagnosed with cancer, either while pregnant or on maternity leave.
She said they launched the 'Leave our Leave' campaign a year ago, seeking immediate legislative changes.
She said it is unthinkable that the Government "deprives women" who are undergoing cancer treatment of this time they can spend with their baby until after they have recovered.
She said they thought the change would come about quickly once they brought it to the Government's attention.
However, she said while positive discussions have taken place, it has not moved forward and that is why they are now really frustrated and have taken their campaign to Leinster House.
Emma McGuinness from Oranmore, Co Galway, 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 coming home.
One week later Ms McGuinness 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.
"Your maternity leave is important and it should be protected, it should be spent with your baby," she said.
"Unfortunately, for Ruairí’s first six 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.
"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."
