Annie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

Great.

I thank all of our guest speakers for their presentations this morning. The theme is to examine a system for assisted dying. I am struck that in an opening statement, a section reads: "It is the conclusion of the senior clinical group in the HSE that there are significant supports, ... legal and medical, in place in Ireland to enable people to die in a dignified way." Is there a feeling, therefore - I am just trying to read between the lines here - that our current system is adequate and that there is enough in place to support people in their end-of-life care? Is it the conclusion of the senior clinical group that the position, as is, is that we have enough in place to do that and that this is perhaps an aside? I am not sure if this is a somewhat contradictory sentence, a conclusion or a response, or if it is just that these two sentences happen to be together.

I tend to ask all my questions in one go. I am also wondering about the resistance which we may see from various medical quarters. I know that our witnesses have outlined some of the areas which we need to look at and whether we stay within the medical system or outside of it. Do our witnesses believe, given their overview of the personnel and so forth within this area, that there would be an enormous amount of resistance to the extent that it could stymie any sort of roll-out, should there be a recommendation from our committee to introduce a system of assisted dying in Ireland? In the opinion of our guest speakers, do they think that should assisted dying be introduced, should a legislative recommendation be made that that can coexist with our current systems of palliative care? I know Ms McArdle said that they would like to have more roll-out and access. Do our witnesses believe there is a way to develop so that the two approaches can exist in harmony with each other or that, due to the ethos held between them, there will always be a butting of moral heads or ethos, so to speak? Those are all my questions.