Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The women of the Dáil and the Seanad are shouting about this matter. They are shouting for a complete rethink regarding the narrative of miscarriage and how we care for those who experience them.

Some 14,000 women in Ireland experience miscarriage every year, one in five pregnancies end in miscarriage and one in ten women will experience it during their lifetime. This is a completely foreseeable event and yet we do not provide for it in our employment law. We ask women to go out and work but we do not provide for this completely foreseeable event to give them certainty that, when this very sad event happens, an event which is often very sudden and shocking, they will have certainty in their employment.

It is important to say that many different employers respond very compassionately and give women space and time to process the miscarriage, both physically and emotionally. Let us set out the physical realities on the floor of the House on behalf of women who have experienced this. It is important that we acknowledge them. It can take a number of days and can involve a medical process and admission to hospital. A surgical or medically induced procedure may be required. It involves a physical trauma and an emotional trauma. Those things take time. Women, who are often provided with compassionate leave by employers, deserve certainty and deserve to know that leave will be available.

There are multiple ways of doing this in legislation. There could be an amendment to Part II of the Parental Leave Act 1998. The Labour Party has taken a different approach involving the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997. There are many different ways of doing this. The Zeitgeistaround this is now changing. We need to see action and a response from the Government. We need to put the reality of women's lives on the Statute Book and to protect them and give them certainty. We also need to rethink medical care and the medical narrative in this area but I will now hand over to my colleague, Deputy Higgins, and I may follow up on that later.

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