Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank our guests for their presentation and the work they are doing in this area. I am married to someone who has worked in maternity services for many years, so I have for 25 years been getting a daily briefing on the challenges in the maternity services. To give an example of where we have come from, when my wife was applying for a job in Dublin many years ago, she was asked how she could apply for a job in Dublin when her husband was working in Cork. I think we have moved on a bit from that kind of approach in respect of maternity care and there have been many changes, but there remain many challenges in this area of breastfeeding and the supports required.

One of our guests stated that 29% of women said they had received conflicting advice from hospital staff. How can we deal with that kind of challenge? Obviously, there are rotas of staff, with different staff at work at different times of the day and night. How can we ensure there is a co-ordinated approach to how individual patients and mothers are handled, given that almost one third receive conflicting advice?