Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Apologies have been received from Senators Ruane, Hoey, O'Loughlin and Seery Kearney.

Parliamentary privilege is considered to apply to the utterances of members participating online in a committee meeting when their participation is from within the parliamentary precincts. There can be no assurances in relation to participation online from outside the parliamentary precincts and members should be mindful of this when contributing. This committee discusses dying, including suicide. Support information can be found on the committee's web page.

Before we start today, I have to apologise in advance that I will have to be very rigid about time today because the budget is on at 1 p.m. and the members have to be in their positions at 1 o'clock. At the same time, I am so grateful to the witnesses who have come here today.

Our meeting today continues with the professional and ethical issues of assisted dying module. The agenda item is engagement on the topic of the ethics of end-of-life care. I warmly welcome Ms Elma Walsh, Mr. John Wall, Mr. Tom Curran and Mr. Garret Ahern. I am so grateful to each one of them, as are the committee members and the secretariat, for taking time out from their lives to come here to educate us because of their own personal life experiences, which many of us know a lot about already. We want to have engagement with them to hear what they have to say, to ask them questions and to benefit from their knowledge and what they have gone through in their life.

I also acknowledge that Deputies Alan Farrell and Lahart are with us online as well.

The format for this meeting is that members will ask questions after the witnesses have given their opening statements. A member can ask an individual witness a question or address a question to all the witnesses more generally. We will just say that each one of the witnesses will keep to five minutes - we will see on the clocks - in giving his or her opening presentation.

I ask Ms Elma Walsh to start by giving us her opening statement. Again, I warmly welcome Ms Walsh.