Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Apologies have been received from Deputy David Cullinane.

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This committee discusses dying, including suicide. Support information can be found on the committee's website.

Our agenda this evening is engagement on the topic of assisted dying in New Zealand and Australia. We are very grateful to all the witnesses for accommodating the difference between time zones. The meeting will be broken into two sessions, the first engaging with witnesses from New Zealand, from 7 p.m. to 8.30 p.m., followed by engagement with witnesses from Australia from 8.30 p.m. to 10 p.m. We will start with our first session, and I would like to welcome Mr. David Seymour. Mr. Seymour is the Member of Parliament for Epson in New Zealand. I also welcome Dr. Sinead Donnelly, consultant in internal medicine and specialist in palliative medicine at Wellington Hospital, and Dr. Kristin Good, chief clinical adviser and registrar of assisted dying from the Ministry of Health, New Zealand. I would like to say morenaand kia orato the witnesses, and I thank them for their early morning start to engage with us. Please excuse my pronunciation; I hope I got that right.

The question format for the meeting is that the members will ask questions after all the witnesses have given their opening statements. A member can ask an individual witness a question or address a question more generally to all the witnesses. I ask that all witnesses keep their opening statements to the agreed five minutes. I will hand over to Mr. Seymour.