Niall Ó Donnghaile (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Go raibh maith agat a Chathaoirligh. I will be brief as most of my questions have been asked in the course of the exchange. This has been a very worthwhile exchange and sharing of views on, as everyone acknowledges, a very important and emotive issue. It is one that everyone has probably been impacted by in terms of the loss of a loved one, particularly one who suffered pain and discomfort in his or her last days. A couple of points that struck me during the exchange was around the definition of "harm". I refer to Mr. Curran's exchange with Deputy Jack Chambers, asking if it is doing harm to allow someone to continue living in such pain and discomfort. I believe that it is a form of doing the person harm. What Deputy Gino Kenny said struck me too. This is actually an issue of life as opposed to an issue of death, and the kind of life that we want to give people. I want to make those points because they really resonated with me.

I have two brief questions. I hope they do not appear facetious but I presume not everyone in Oregon avails of assisted dying. I presume that there are still people who go through palliative care and die the way that they would have died and that this is an issue of choice for people and an issue of people planning for their deaths and ensuring that they have a passing that is dignified. With the greatest respect to Dr. McQuillan, because I have nothing but admiration for what she and other carers do at the end of people's lives, but just hearing about the cocktail of drugs and talking about the balance of Brufen and morphine and all of that strikes me, and I am sure will strike a lot of people, as a reminder of the months and months of prolonged periods people have to have a cocktail of certain pain relief while they were in great pain. That is my first question.

Deputy Jack Chambers raises very valid questions in terms of disability action. Deputy O'Callaghan also makes the valid point that we do have to tease all of this out because we are legislators. I refer to Senator Black's point about the procedures and the steps to access this stuff. No one is going to go out and actively seek people with disabilities for them to avail of assisted dying. Regardless of what the steps are, whether someone may have a disability that is life-limiting or debilitating, he or she would have to instigate and initiate this process. There are those two questions. Regardless of the model, whether is Oregon, Belgium, Holland or wherever, I presume that there are still people who avail of palliative care and die in the manner that they would have died and the manner people here, North and South, are still dying. I hope that is clear.