Mr. Justin McKenna:

I would like to come in if I may. I am sympathetic to what the Senator said about his father. I lost my wife to motor neurone disease. I remember that towards the end of the two years when she was in care and the family were around, even despite the fact that it coincided with Covid-19, as a family we were extremely united. We were close to Clare and we were close to each other, and every step along the way and every day that was in it, we did not lose an ounce of love. In the overall, it was a strong sense. I felt for a while, because I was with her day in, day out, seven days a week and 24 hours every day, that I was as close to her as I ever was in 40 years of marriage. At the same time, however, while I was selfish in the love I felt because of that experience, I could not allow her pain, because I felt it as well, and that at the end, she had to make that decision. When we went to the hospice, she wrote on her tab, because she could not speak, that she wanted to be taken out in a box. The palliative people in the hospice understood this. She left six days later in a box. If I was to go with the Senator's point of view of autonomy - the autonomy that she would lose in making that wish and that I was not there to honour it - then I have lost something in doing it. I only regret that I did not say goodbye to her and she did not say goodbye to me, but that is palliative sedation.