Babies unchanged after dependency culture clash

MICHAEL McDowell has never been a man to encourage the dependency culture, so it was a bit of a surprise yesterday when he turned up at an event designed to promote breastfeeding.

There he was in the Ark in Temple Bar: indulging feckless toddlers some of them as old as six months - who had no greater ambitions in life than to live off their mothers for the foreseeable future, instead of trying to make an honest living by themselves.

But then this is an election year, and babies mean votes, so the controversial Progressive Democrat was not the only politician in the Ark for the publication of a booklet on breastfeeding by the Irish Childbirth Trust.

Liz McManus was there, and Frances Fitzgerald and Patricia McKenna, and others were rushing to the scene as word spread in Leinster House of a build up of prams in Eustuce Street.

The focus of attention, however, remained firmly on McDowell, as he posed with infants for the cameras. He denied that this was an attempt to soften his Rottweiler image, but either his image is softening anyway or the breed is, after all, good with children.

Certainly, he smiled at several babies yesterday and discreet checking afterwards revealed that none of them needed to be changed as a result.

Six month old Ciaran Brangan from Ardeath, Co Meath, even managed to outstare the TD. He refused all entreaties to turn and face the cameras and instead eyeballed McDowell, showing the sort of mettle that marks him out as a future Meath footballer.

Introducing the booklet, Breastfeeding: the early days, ICT president Brenda O'Malley Farrell called for changes in the labour laws to encourage more breast feeding. But, briefly baring his canine teeth, McDowell revealed that his support for the cause was moral rather than legislative:

"I think breastfeeding is a choice for women and they shouldn't be pressurised one way or another, and I think men should be much more supportive of it. But it's not a matter for the law."