Dr. Andrea Mulligan:

Those are interesting and difficult questions. On whether assisted suicide is happening, there is one well-known case of trying to prosecute it. The case was quite complicated, and the person involved went on record to talk about it. There is an interesting question as to whether it might have occurred but the jury was not willing to convict the person. I do not know whether assisted suicide is going on and nobody knows that. If this committee could think of some way to find that out then that would be very valuable. In the UK and the parallel debates, it became known that there were people leaving the UK or being brought by friends and relatives to Switzerland to avail of assisted dying at the Dignitas clinic, which is quite well-known. There are a lot of well-documented cases like that. The other distinction is that the UK's Director of Public Prosecutions had issued some public statements indicating that this happened, that they knew about it and that they did not prosecute for certain reasons. There was interesting data in respect of that matter, and there is interesting data about it in the UK. However, I am not aware of any in Ireland. It would be valuable for this committee to try to find out whether that is the case.

The second question was on whether a person's desires might change. Most regimes would try to identify whether the person's desire to die is a function of clinical depression. As a result, the authorities would try to screen out people who have a mental illness that is causing them to make the decision.

That is very difficult. How does one draw the line between a mental illness and a genuine desire? People with a mental illness still have genuine wishes and desires. It is a very difficult line to draw. The other point is that some regimes permit, in essence, mental pain as a criterion. If a person had treatment-resistant depression, that would be an indication in itself for assistance in suicide. Some regimes do not allow that. I do not know whether that is helpful to the committee. It is a difficult question.