Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Okay. I thank Dr. Nitschke.

What is Dr. Mewett's view on whether there should ever be a limit to the request? For example, let us take it that a person has capacity. A person might have depression at various levels, he or she might have a severe disability he or she does not want to live with or he or she might have very unsupportive family or friends. All these things might feed into a fear or a desire to have such people's lives ended. There are medical professionals who say there is always a conversation that can be that can improve that situation and that should remain the focus, but what is Dr. Mewett's philosophical view of that claim? One of the issues we have to deal with is if it were to be conceded that in certain cases a person might have his or her life ended with the support of the state, subject to some medical threshold being reached, we are immediately into antidiscrimination arguments about the person with severe disability, the person who says his or her mental state is also a matter for him or her to judge and we interfere with such a person's autonomy and worse, we discriminate against him or her when we allow it for one category of person but not for another. What then is Dr. Mewett's philosophical view? He has told us Switzerland is an outlier but what is his view about whether there should be any limit to the claim?