John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank our witnesses. The Irish Hospital Consultants Association paper was very informative in trying to balance the two views. One of the lines that struck me from it is that rarely are two medical circumstances the same. I am not speaking for the general public but that is probably news to a lot of people in the sense that conditions are conditions. It is certainly my impression and very strong view that this is why we as a committee resisted from the start in naming conditions. There are great shining lights out there alive today living with the most complex and the most challenging life-limiting conditions who continue to live great lives. That is one of the things we did here at the start.

I do not like going to the extreme as an example, which I believe Dr. Twomey has done regularly. We might have Dr. Twomey in here again sometime when we can narrow down the options. We are grappling with this. I will come back and ask Dr. Twomey questions to follow up on something he said earlier about malevolent intentions and his experience of that. We need to hear about the vulnerability, and not necessarily of older people.

On prescribing conditions, reference was made to asking younger people about end of life or assisted dying. We are probably making a big leap if we say that lots of them would say "Yes". If a microphone is stuck in front of a person, he or she would move to these conditions that we associate with life limitation whereas there are beacons out there, not just of care but also of the patient.

I will ask Dr. O'Shea a question that he will find unusual. How would Dr. O'Shea eulogise a person whose life ended in an assisted way?