Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Perhaps we could stay in the area of midwives and lactation consultants, on which Ms Cahill made a good point. It is fantastic that we have seen some movement from the Department on this with the announcement last night. That is in no small part down to the huge amount of highlighting and work that both of our organisations have done on this issue. Well done to them.

I want to go into that issue a little bit more. Certainly, my experience was that the midwife is the first point of contact in those first few moments when a mother meets her baby. The midwife is one's first direction about how to do all this. I wish to talk a little bit about the role of the midwife. The importance of the lactation consultant being a separate post is a point well made. It seems to me that midwives will all have a role to play here. Ms Rea spoke about the announcement last night being a drop in the ocean. If midwives are the first circle that a person meets, perhaps the second circle includes community nurses and GPs, who have such a central role in many women's experience but who are often hugely overworked and underresourced.

I would like to hear the witnesses' opinions. In the next few years as we move into Sláintecare, how do they see those tiers of influence in women's experience? How can we support midwives to all be lactation consultants? How can we carve out lactation consultants who have only that job to do? What would that other support for GPs and community nurses look like?