Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

While there have been some thanks to the Chair and secretariat for how they have handled these public meetings, I am conscious that we all have much work ahead of us in a private capacity. Therefore, I will save my thanks for later. I thank the witnesses for coming in and sharing their submissions.

I want to pick up on something with Dr. Ní Bhriain. She spoke about the need for conscientious objection. Members and people who have appeared before the committee have spoken much about safeguards and conscientious objection. I would be interested in hearing some of the experiences regarding conscientious objection as it stands within the HSE, what we can learn from that to transfer on to this and how we ensure we are adequately providing for conscientious objection, while at the same time ensuring service delivery.

My second question is more in response to Ms McArdle's point regarding palliative care. She quite rightly said that palliative care and assisted dying are completely separate and not to be conflated. Previous witnesses before this committee have conflated them and we are presented with an either-or choice that either we have palliative care or assisted dying, and it is kind of ruled out that we have both. Again, that would seem to me to be wrong and I assume, based on that statement, it would be Ms McArdle's evidence that it is wrong. She might talk to me about whether she sees assisted dying as undermining palliative care. How would the policy development go forward? How would the funding go forward? If this committee was to recommend and the Government was to implement assisted dying, would she be concerned about palliative care or are they completely separate issues and not to be conflated or used as a red herring in any way?

I will start with Dr. Ní Bhriain and conscientious objection.