Ms Sin?ad Gibney:

I will pick up on a couple of those points and then perhaps my colleagues might jump in too, maybe on the definition of physician-assisted and so on. I do not have an answer on the first point. I could follow up on that one. Senator Ruane introduced the state coercion issue. I was calling for that in the language of that submission. I thought it was helpful with regard to positioning. The Senator is right to draw it out further than disability and into socioeconomic circumstance too. There are ways that we can, as a State, cater to these. For example, there is the optional protocol ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. I cannot make a committee appearance without once again plugging that we need to immediately ratify that optional protocol. We have also recently called for the protection of economic, social and cultural, ESC, rights in the Constitution. We know there are measures.

Part of our message today is to encourage the committee to see it in the round and to see that those other issues play into this, and to put forward its own recommendations that may fall slightly outside the assisted dying space and into these other areas, where we can see that how we operate as a State also has implications for this question, and ask what we can do in the broader context to address it.