Professor Penny Lewis:

Thank you very much for inviting me. I am only going to make a very brief statement because my participation will be most helpful if I answer the questions of committee members. I will just tell the committee a little bit about myself. I am an academic medical lawyer based in London. I write and research on end of life decision making and in particular, on assisted dying. I have published a number of articles and a book on that topic and have given evidence orally, in writing or both, to a number of different legislatures considering legalisation, including the UK Parliament, the Scottish Parliament and some Australian jurisdictions. I was an expert witness for plaintiffs or applicants in the Canadian case of Carter. I provided expert evidence on the way in which assisted dying regimes work, including how the law was changed in various countries or jurisdictions to permit either euthanasia, assisted suicide or both; how those regimes regulate assisted dying, namely, the criteria and safeguards employed; and what the empirical evidence tells us about how those criteria are applied, how the safeguards work in practice and what evidence we have of assisted dying in jurisdictions where it is not legally permissible. I am currently an expert witness for the claimants in two cases that are going through the English courts. One is the Noel Conway case which involves a patient who is terminally ill. The other case, which was in court yesterday, is the case of Omid T who is incurably and severely ill but not likely to die in the near future. He has a life limiting condition but not one with an immediate end in sight.

I want to highlight the fact that I do not think that anyone who works in this area is completely neutral. I do not think that is possible. Having said that, I try to evaluate the evidence as rigorously as I can. I do not have a principled opposition to legalisation but that does not that mean that I am in favour of legalisation in all jurisdictions. I would not presume, not being an expert on the provision of health care in Ireland or how the legal system here functions, to tell this committee that Ireland should legalise or not. However, I can help the committee, I hope, by providing information about how regimes in other jurisdictions work and what the evidence tells us about the practice of assisted dying, both in jurisdictions where it is legal and where it is not.