Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Mr. Curran mentioned the assessment process and the rational choice. What I would give consideration to, particularly in an Irish context, is the fact that people are waiting perhaps a year for a psychiatric assessment. In that case, the focus should be on triaging people quickly and giving them the best medical care, which is evidence based, so that their psychological or psychiatric problem can be helped rather than normalising another assessment process that could undermine their evidence-based medical treatment.

I want to move to the issue of medical ethics and the ethical considerations. Doctors try to act in the best interest of the patient. They practise beneficence, not maleficence, and should do no harm. The principle of double effect has been mentioned in much of the research on this issue. How does Mr. Curran square the duty of the doctor, when he or she is training and working to act in the patient's best interest, to do no harm with ending a patient's life? How does Mr. Curran square that contradiction in terms of medical ethics? Is there an ethical principle that Mr. Curran upholds that supersedes the well-researched and published medical ethics that most doctors subscribe to?