Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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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.

Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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All of us know women who have suffered miscarriages or couples who have gone through a miscarriage. If people do not believe they do, it is because those women and couples have not shared that experience with them, which is okay. That is why so many couples wait until the three-month mark to announce their news. The sad reality is that one in five pregnancies ends in miscarriage. As a State, we give women who miscarry towards the end of their pregnancy the time and the space they need to come to terms with that but we offer no such support to women who lose their pregnancies early on. They have to use their annual leave. They have to get a vague doctor's certificate or they have to go into work and pretend that nothing has happened, which is worse. That is not fair. My colleague, Senator Seery Kearney, shared her experience yesterday. In the Dáil Chamber, she told of her experience of five miscarriages. Her journey is, unfortunately, all too common but it is not talked about generally or in chambers such as this.

We hear young women raising this issue in the Seanad and, in New Zealand, a young female Prime Minister is leading on the issue. That is because it is up to women such as us, who have platforms such as this, to speak up for other women who suffer these losses of pregnancy and who cannot effect change in the way we can. Will the Minister hear us? Will he support these women and provide for miscarriage leave for women who suffer early miscarriages?

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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I thank the Deputies for raising this issue. I welcome the opportunity to come before the House to discuss this important subject. The emotional impact of pregnancy loss is absolutely tremendous. Unfortunately, it is experienced by many. There has been a very welcome move in society towards greater openness about miscarriage and pregnancy loss and the heartbreak it can bring to women and families. I am thankful that we are all moving on from a time when such trauma had to be shouldered in silence. It is, however, very clear that parents who have gone through this experience still do not benefit from the kinds of compassionate supports that should be in place at such an incredibly difficult time.

The Maternity Protection Acts 1994 and 2004 provide that an employee is entitled to full maternity leave in the case of stillbirth after 24 weeks and the Paternity Leave and Benefit Act 2016 also provides for paternity leave in this situation. However, there is currently no provision for the loss of a pregnancy prior to this point, despite the devastation it can bring to parents. The Government fully recognises the need to assist parents in this difficult situation and on Monday this week it agreed not to oppose the Labour Party's Private Members' Bill in the Seanad, the Organisation of Working Time (Reproductive Health Related Leave) Bill 2021, which provides for leave in these circumstance. I acknowledge and thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this important contribution to this debate. I also note and acknowledge the very genuine and personal contributions from Senators that we heard in the course of that debate.

While there are some difficulties with the Labour Party's Bill, which the Minister of State, Deputy English, outlined in his contribution, the Government recognises that this is an issue which must be addressed. In this regard, my Department and I have committed to undertake research to examine how best to support working parents who have suffered a miscarriage. We need to understand how we can meet the need for time off from work. This may be through paid leave, additional unpaid leave or other measures required by parents who have suffered a miscarriage. This research will inform Government policy and help us to develop a practical, workable response through leave or other supports. We have seen international examples of this type of leave being introduced, particularly in New Zealand, and I will examine those options in the context of the research being undertaken.

This is an issue that affects both parents and supports should be available to both. We want to facilitate parents having this conversation with their employers, recognising that they have suffered a bereavement and need time to deal with their loss. Reproductive health should be supported in the workplace and employees should not feel concerned that an honest conversation about their loss or their reproductive health challenges will disadvantage them in any way. I am sure most employers would deal with people in this situation in a sensitive manner, as Deputy Carroll MacNeill has alluded to, but a statutory entitlement may provide more encouragement towards openness.

I again thank the Deputies for raising this Topical Issue matter and I thank the Labour Party for introducing its Private Members' Bill. I look forward to continuing to engage with Members of the House as we undertake this research and subsequently make proposals.

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister. There are a number of advantages to placing this on the Statute Book. It recognises that the issue is a practical one that affects people and that a legislative response is appropriate. Another great advantage is that it allows people to simply call their HR department and invoke their right, or ask their partners to do it on their behalf. It would be automatic and there would be certainty to the matter, which is really important. Many of us have had miscarriages. I have had a miscarriage. It can take a long time. One can see on a screen one week that things are not going well and then have this confirmed the following week. One may need to be admitted to hospital. These things can take time and they are very emotionally draining. The Lancet this month has a brilliant editorial on how we think about miscarriage and how that narrative could be reconceived. It says that, for too long, miscarriage has been minimised and often dismissed and that dealing with a combination of private grief, misconceptions and guilt can lead to women putting more pressure on themselves than is necessary. I thank the Minister for his response and invite him to invite me to help him with his research, as somebody in the Dáil who has been through this.

Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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I acknowledge all of the work the Minister has done to support families. He recently extended the period of parental leave to five weeks for both parents, which is really welcome and a great way of supporting modern families. As Deputy Carroll MacNeill has said, we now have an opportunity to further show our support for parents by introducing paid leave for early pregnancy loss. It is important to acknowledge, as the Minister has done, that while it is a woman's body that experiences the physical loss, the emotional loss is experienced by both parents. I strongly believe that the State needs to do more to support both parents through this. Paid miscarriage leave for the woman is a great place to start.

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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We will certainly examine and consider the statutory element. As Deputy Higgins alluded to, we have acted to enhance rights and protections for families, particularly for women, through the parental leave extension about which she spoke and ongoing work to implement legislation on the gender pay gap, through the proposals we are examining with regard to extending breaks for breastfeeding and by introducing, for the first time, paid domestic violence leave.

The Government therefore has a strong track record in recognising the protections families need and particularly the protections needed for women in the workplace, in the home and wherever else those protections are needed and in acting. It is important we do the research. Deputy Carroll MacNeill alluded to the fact that there is a significant body of information out there. We use that to ensure that the proposals we bring forward are properly targeted and will be impactful for women who have experienced a miscarriage and for their partners and families. It is right that we take that bit of time to do the research, but I am very happy to engage with both Deputies or indeed any other Deputy or Senator who wants to engage on this issue because it is really important we have these open conversations on the floors of the Dáil and the Seanad. Even in doing this, we encourage the wider conversation about miscarriages in workplaces and in society.