Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I warmly welcome the motion and congratulate Senator Pauline O’Reilly on it. It is great. It is very long - at three and half pages - because it is filled with practical, specific and real measures that could be implemented and would make a great difference to women and to breastfeeding. As the Senator has mentioned, the recommendations in the motion relate to matters like accessible HSE spaces, the availability of breast pumps and very important things like lactation consultants.

I want to pull back a little bit to look at where we are in Ireland. We are in a situation here where we are outliers. The percentage of babies who are being breast-fed at three months has dropped to just 31%. We talked about a 9% figure during the debate on the Online Safety and Media Regulation, OSMR, Bill. I congratulate the Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin, for engaging with Senator O’Reilly and myself. I also congratulate all of the groups that were mentioned earlier and in this motion for their work. The Minister gave the space in the OSMR Bill for the regulation of the advertising and promotion of infant formula, or indeed a ban as that is an option within that Bill. I hope that will be taken up by the new media commission when it is in place.

The figure we discussed previously - just 9% of babies being breast-fed at six months versus an average of 40% internationally - is very stark because it means that the majority of the peer experiences that people have involve not being supported. When we talk about choice, it is there, but what we are actually talking about here is support because when it comes to choice, we know that women want to breastfeed. That is why we have over 60% of women breastfeeding in the hospital and choosing to do so at that early point. It is very much about supporting that choice. Again, not all will choose to breastfeed, but the 60% of women who want to breastfeed and express such a wish at the beginning should be supported to ensure we do not have that figure falling down to 37% by the time they leave the hospital. This issue is not around choice but is around a choice not being supported. I agree that what happens in that early period of time in the hospital is crucial when we see a reduction of almost half in the number of women who are breastfeeding.

It is very important that we have proper lactation supports. We must recognise that because, historically, Ireland has had a low level of breastfeeding, people do not have as much peer support, which is why they need public support in this regard. Sometimes there is a sort of reverse logic whereby this can be a framed as an either-or situation, but we need to be really clear. Breastfeeding is something that has public health advocacy on its side, and has civil society advocates promoting it. Formula milk has a very significant industry with a very significant advertising budget behind it. We are talking on the one side about a public health message and then, on the other side, about the kind of very insidious marketing we heard about during the OSMR Bill - the late-night pop-ups and the talk-to-another-mum idea, which breached all of the standards in the WHO code on the marketing of formula. The standards are very clear about what should never be presented or tagged in as other information, and specifies that new mothers should not be targeted. These actual guidelines, which have been in place since the 1980s, have been breached in the marketing strategies.

We have a kind of reverse stigma whereby public health, with the tiny amount of resources it has to advertise compared with the industry, is told it is terrible and it makes people feel bad if it tells them about breastfeeding. It is a reverse situation because nobody wants to make anybody feel guilty. What people want to do is to let mothers know about breastfeeding and support them. Our public health messaging should not have to compete with the industry. Indeed, we need public health practical supports for those who cannot breastfeed, such as the breast milk bank which was mentioned by Senator Pauline O’Reilly. The only such bank we have in the country is in Northern Ireland. We do not have one in Dublin, in Cork or in other centres of population. One of the reasons for this is that it does not make anyone any money; it just helps women and children, and public health. That is exactly why this option should be made available to support people.

Coming to the end of the motion, one other aspect of it which I wish to commend as very important is that it has a great deal in it about the international dimension of this issue. The fact is that internationally, and these are very striking figures, the deaths of 823,000 children and 20,000 mothers could be averted through universal breastfeeding every year, according to The Lancet. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of lives which are directly affected by this. When we talk about aggressive marketing, there is a reason many countries, including many developing countries, have tried to bring in bans on formula advertising. That is because it costs lives. Ireland has a responsibility in this area because we are one of the largest exporters of infant formula in the world and we need to be very careful ethically about how that is marketed, not just in Ireland but internationally. For example, one third of Ireland’s infant formula is exported to China, and breastfeeding rates in China have halved in the past ten years. That did not happen by spontaneous choice but is happening through an industry positioning itself in a market and promoting itself. We need to lead ethically in this area by giving real public health supports in their fullest sense to the women of Ireland by regulating this industry and how it advertises and promotes itself, not just in Ireland but internationally. Again, I commend the motion to the House and thank Senator O’Reilly.