Professor Desmond O'Neill:

The problem is we will be increasingly deprived of the therapeutic impulse, the hope impulse, connectedness and respect. About ten years ago, RTÉ broadcast a programme on this topic and showed an example of the awfulness of what life might be life. It showed a man lying flat on his bed, coughing and spluttering, and he had a feeding tube in. Actually, that was an example of poor care. You should not be feeding anyone with a tube when they are lying flat on their back, so I got on to the programme makers. It was a classic example of creating a space for despair and nihilism.

We tend to be negative about the future.

One of the classic examples of people thinking into the future is taking a mortgage. A mortgage is an advance financial directive. It is a contract that is made and it seems fine. Many people took out mortgages during the Celtic tiger and then when everything went bust, as a society we realised that things had changed and we went to vast lengths to support people who were in distress from something that had been entered into as a contract. The concern very often is people fearing for the future, losing trust and not generating an expectation of a framework of trust, care and support. It affects the individual, those around them and their family. It also affects the core impulse of the healthcare professions and the development of better care. There was a classic example in Canada of a quadriplegic woman who had made her own way all the way. All of a sudden, her job dried up for some reason and she applied for disability benefit. They told her it would take nine months and she was going to be income-free for nine months, so she decided to go for medical assistance in dying and she was told she could get that in 90 days. She made that as a point in challenging the disparity of what may happen when this is offered as a way out. She would have been accepted for medical assistance in dying.