Ms Megan Etherton:

I thank Deputy Shortall for her questions. This undertaking was never intended as research. We have a disclaimer in the report stating this was an informal questionnaire that Ms Byrne created and then the project grew legs. The respondents self-selected, and the results we have were determined by those people who wished to share their stories, and those were potentially more likely to be the more negative stories. However, the national maternity survey 2020 has shown that over 40% of women did not know how to submit feedback about their maternity experience. Our initiative therefore fills a gap in the absence of any larger project exploring the experience of breastfeeding support in hospitals. Women would not be pouring their grief out on Instagram if there was some other way in which their experiences were being fed up to a national level, being acted upon and associated changes implemented in a realistic way.

The national maternity experience survey does not ask about specific breastfeeding experiences in maternity hospitals and that is a gap in the research. We hope this qualitative information provides an impetus for a larger and more comprehensive study which will explore the characteristics of the environment. Rather than just focusing on women who do or do not breastfeed, we want to understand the larger factors at work in this regard. I refer to women coming out of a hospital, being told their experience may not have been as they might have wanted it to go, and that if their babies are being fed with formula, or however, they should be happy with that and that their babies are healthy and happy and what are they complaining about. That type of attitude just negates the whole experience for women who may have intended to breastfeed. Providing an open and independent questionnaire, as we did, allowed those mothers to speak freely and get these experiences off their chests. It does allow people to coalesce around the issue, and I guess that is why we are here and why these stories have grown legs.

Turning to the Deputy's second question about formula, I will pass that over to be answered by Ms Byrne, Ms Cahill or Ms Rea from Cuidiú.