Mr. Tom Curran:

It is very significant for two reasons that this is being discussed in 2023. The first is that, ten years ago, our High Court and Supreme Court sent this issue back to these very Houses to be looked at, having made a judgment that, if they could, they would have brought in something for Marie Fleming. They could not do that for one individual person so they passed the matter back to these Houses. That was ten years ago. It has taken ten years for anything to happen. The second reason also relates to ten years ago. December this year is the anniversary of Marie's death. She died on 20 December ten years ago.

Like an awful lot of people involved in this issue or trying to achieve the legalisation of assisted dying for people, I got involved for very personal reasons, as the members will know. Marie Fleming was the person I lived with and loved. She suffered from multiple sclerosis, MS. She was one of the unlucky people for whom the MS entered an advanced and progressed state very quickly. She decided the MS was taking away her ability to live but she did not want it to have control over her ability to die. She did not want a prolonged and possibly painful end. She did not want that for herself but she also did not want it for the people around her. She did not want us to have to watch her die for months and possibly years. She decided that, when the time came, she wanted that choice herself.

It was very unusual for it to be spoken about in Ireland nearly 20 years ago.

On Marie’s instructions, which I took an awful lot of, I went out looking at how that might be achieved. There are two ways in which it could have been achieved. The legal route we found was the compassion of the Swiss people, who have had assisted dying for a long time in Switzerland. The compassion of the Swiss people allows people to travel to Switzerland. Under Swiss law, people from Ireland can get assistance there. It does not have to involve a medical professional; in fact, most of the clinics there do not involve medical people at all. We looked at that route but there were a couple of obstacles. The first was the ability to travel and the second was that the only method used in Switzerland at that time was to swallow to 100 ml of a liquid - Nembutal dissolved in water. Marie’s swallow was being affected by her MS, so that option would have meant she would have had to go before she wanted, which defeated the purpose. The other way was to go outside the law and put a plan in place ourselves. Unfortunately, those are still the only two methods that people can use in Ireland to achieve a peaceful death for themselves.

Suicide was legalised in 1983, so there is no legal impediment to anybody taking their own life, and that was upheld in the High Court. Part of our challenge was based on the fact that the Criminal Law (Suicide) Act 1993 discriminated against persons with a disability in that it prevented such persons from having access to something that an able-bodied person was able to access. That challenge was upheld, so it is not a crime to take one's own life and nobody can be stopped from doing so.

I would like the committee to look at the Swiss option. We have heard criticism of many different regimes which have brought this option in, including Canada, the Netherlands and Belgium. We seldom hear anybody criticise Switzerland because Switzerland works for the people for whom it is intended to work. I urge members to look at the Swiss law. I would like this committee to recommend that the Oireachtas enact Marie’s law to allow this option to be made available to people like Marie. As the High Court stated, it would have made it available for people like Marie if it had been able to do so but its only option was to strike out the law.

If members wish to know more about the Swiss option and the whole idea of assisted suicide, we are holding a meeting at 11 a.m. tomorrow in the Teachers Club. Members are very welcome to come. I urge them not to allow Marie's death to have been in vain. While I will not go into the detail, she died peacefully. Let us honour her life and death by enacting Marie’s law.