Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 16 January 2024
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Assisted Dying
Engagement with People with Disabilities
Mr. Peter Kearns:
On that, and with respect to what Deputy Kenny said and we came to before, we as disabled persons' organisations quickly organised a few forums for disabled people across the country and across impairments, including intellectual disability and acquired impairments. Our submission rests on that feedback. We also brought in speakers from the UK's Not Dead Yet campaign, which again is a DPO. We published a series of articles in a leaflet to our members. We, therefore, have had quite a long engagement with disabled people across the country and heard their concerns about the legislation or assisted suicide. We as an organisation have the confidence to back up the points we made in our submission that disabled people have concerns about the ideas around terminal illness and life-limiting conditions. Again, they are subjective phrases and we worry about the clarification of those phrases in the legislation.
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