Extending paid breastfeeding breaks for new mothers is "excessive", according to business group ISME.
The Minister for Children Roderic O'Gorman has recently campaigned to increase the mandatory breastfeeding entitlement from six months to two years.
Under the current rules, women who are breastfeeding are entitled to take one hour off work each day, with pay, as a breastfeeding break for up to 26 weeks after the birth of their child.
However, ISME's Chief Executive Neil McDonnell believes extending the entitlement will not encourage more women to breastfeed for longer and will create issues for employers.
"We acknowledge that Ireland has one of the lowest rates of breastfeeding in Europe but what we're saying is, we're not going to solve that by increasing workplace entitlements and putting them on employers because we don't believe that's the real barrier to extending this," he said.
"The current entitlement to six months' paid breastfeeding breaks broadly matches the weaning period and to extend liability on that to employers for two years, we just think would be excessive and it's not going to address the core issue that there's a social and cultural issue here.
"Taking that out to two years isn't going to address the problem but it is going to create a great deal of difficulty for employers."
Main Image: File photo. Credit: Iuliia Bondarenko from Pixabay
