A very personal journey led Dearbhail McDonald, Group Business Editor of INM, to break the first rule of journalism and become the story herself.  Dearbhail joined Marian Finucane to talk about her choice to get her eggs frozen and to discuss the implication of modern fertility rates on economics and industry.

First of all, Marian wanted to talk about what led to this decision for Dearbhail.

"For every woman, (there are) complex and varied reasons…  Age is certainly a factor, it could also be your career trajectory, but also Marian, by the time she reaches her late 20's or early 30's, most women will have experienced the entire spectrum of issues relating to woman and fertility.  Either through their own personal experience or the experience of family and friends, they will have friends who for whatever reason… will have faced a crisis pregnancy and faced a termination.  They will have friends who had difficulty conceiving, who miscarried in the earlier stages of their pregnancy…  Whether or not she has children, every woman has her own fertility journey."

Dearbhail says that while this is a personal issue, it is also so much more than that.  She says thousands and thousands of women regularly face similar decisions, balancing life, career, ambition, practicality and financial concerns.

"It really grates me when this is presented as a 'women having it all' debate because it's a much, much more fundamental, substantive societal issue and I knew that I had a personal story that could illuminate that."

On a macro level, fertility-related decisions are going to have a profound effect on the future of the country.  The truth is that we are living longer and having fewer children.  This creates an equation that must be carefully balanced in the future.  Dearbhail weighed up her own options and contemplated her decision at length, choosing to have her eggs frozen in the UK, but Brexit provided some unforeseen complications.

"Forget Brexit, this is egg-xit!  My eggs have left the European Union and all of that effort I took and money I paid to secure them legally has just gone out the window!"

This is part of the story that Dearbhail shared in her Institute of Directors’ Lunch Bites speech.  Click here to listen to the interview in full from The Marian Finucane Show.