Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will do my best but we have a big decision to make in this country. There is a report in The Daily Telegraph that the government of New South Wales slashed palliative care funding while directing some of that money to assisted suicide. This was AUS $150 million that was supposed to pay for items like palliative care, nurses, pain management, drugs and better end-of-life services and was put into the general New South Wales health budget, which includes AUS $97.4 million over four years to implement voluntary assisted dying laws. This is a report from last October. I do not understand why Dr. Allcroft questioned the Kissane study on the basis that Kissane has particular opinions. Very few people are without opinions but Dr. Allcroft has not questioned the quality of research or the findings and the statement that up to one half of doctors who participate in assisted deaths experience significant psychological and emotional distress. If Dr. Allcroft is letting that stand, I put it to him that this does not sound like normal medicine where doctors do their best. It sounds as if we are not talking medicine here if that is how so many doctors are reacting to their involvement.

On the question of pain, I think it was accepted here today that most of the time pain is not the issue, that palliative care generally deals with most symptoms and discomfort and that there is possibility of palliative sedation in extremis. It is about autonomy, choice and people's sense of control over their lives. I think this is coming across very strongly but I wonder why graphic descriptions of tumours causing bleeding and so on were used in an effort to persuade us. That is the human experience of suffering. Thankfully, so much can be done nowadays to address suffering. The question is whether there is an attempt to subvert our reasonable consideration of the issues by reference to the "yuck" factor.

Can the witnesses credibly talk about there not being a slippery slope considering that all this is very early days in Australia and New Zealand? We have seen how in Oregon, which is often cited as a conservative jurisdiction in this area, the percentage of people who feel a burden in the context of the reasons they have for wanting assisted suicide is growing year on year and is now at over 53%. Is it not the case that the witnesses cannot really give us any reassurance from Australia and New Zealand about whether people will feel a burden over time, whether medicine would be corrupted in the doctor-patient relationship and whether there will be implications for the funding of palliative care because they have only had this a wet week and the witnesses from these states are all involved so they are doing their best to put the best case for it?

My final question is for Dr. Crowe.