Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses. We are coming to the nub of the issue of whether someone truly chooses assisted dying and has the ability and supports to reach that point.

I will focus on two areas. First, I valued the discussion on depression, the implications of depression, the experience of people with depression of their own emotions and their perceptions while they have it. I appreciate that Dr. Doherty is drawing a respectful limit on the inferences that can be drawn from the correlation between the number of older women suffering from depression and the number of older women choosing assisted dying. As such, we must consider depression seriously and, following on from Dr. Dalton’s comments, ensure that we have supports in place.

While I support that fully, there is a danger within it. If someone is expressing a wish for assisted dying, does an implication arise that we should have a safeguard that checks his or her mental health? While I can see value in that, I am wary of other fields where we overly medicalise people making a legitimate choice for their own lives. How do we not do that? I am sorry, as I am a little inarticulate. I am trying to get to what I am feeling and thinking about this. Is there a danger that, if we look at depression as being too big an influence, we will force people through procedures or treatments for depression or make them prove themselves free of depression before they can legitimately make that choice? I agree that we need to have all supports in place so that the choice is freely made, but would there be an implication to that?

Second, I wish to ask about quality of life. I find that a disturbing determinant, to be perfectly honest. Quality is a subjective experience rather than an objective one we need to be careful. On the one hand, we need to provide the choice of assisted dying so that, when the subjective experience is intolerable, there is a choice for those individuals. On the other hand, our committee is charged with responsibility for not determining what “quality of life” is or setting thresholds. If we are not doing that, then at what point does an individual get the opportunity to make the choice or is presented with information on assisted dying and how does that happen?

These are my thoughts arising out of the witnesses’ opening statements.