Mr. Peter Kearns:

I am struck by people saying to me, "If I were you, I would kill myself". They are not doing it in a bad way. The narrative and discourse, which has only surfaced in the past three years because of the original Bill, is around the idea of the fear of becoming a disabled person and the State then wanting to provide - as Mr. Dolan said, it could be in a benign rather than a sinister way - the choice of assisted suicide. The idea is that your worth as a citizen is based on an impairment label or medical label. That narrative means disabled citizens are not as valued as non-disabled citizens.

At present, disabled people in Ireland do not have to wake up thinking about this. However, and this is also true of non-disabled people, at every life stage, whether someone is aged 20, 30, 40, 50 or 60, the question will have to be asked, "Is my life worth living?" because the State has provided people with the choice of assisted suicide. We do not have to treat it like that at present. We say that the State should provide to the disabled, and Mr. Dolan also made this point, the possibility of living a life at every life stage.