Professor Desmond O'Neill:

The last time I was discussing this issue with the organisation, it had a temporary head. I have been involved in a public debate with it over its stance which I consider to be injudicious. We talk in health care ethics about legalisms. I am always very concerned when one puts health care ethics and law together in one course. Health care ethics is about a broad, complex sense of what the issues may be, whereas, in legal terms, particularly regarding precedent, there tends to be a black and white decision, a dichotomous decision. One of our concerns about medical students and trainees is that when in doubt, if they do not have enough ethical formation to be comfortable with the degree of uncertainty, they will resort to legalisms, which involves asking what the law states. We know that the law can be unethical. One of the simple examples I use is that in all 50 US states the reporting of elder abuse was made mandatory in a misguided attempt to do right. It actually turned out to be a complete own goal and a negative because, as I know from chairing the Government working group on elder abuse, older people have a right to decide whether they want their cases to be investigated. If an elderly person had a son with a drug dependency who was taking some of his or her pension and the result of an investigation would be a breaking up of the relationship which older people are smart enough to see, he or she might refuse it. This may seem like a trivial case, but it points to a really important issue. Although the Oireachtas is a place where laws are formed, I hope it has a strong sense of looking, in a deeper sense, at where philosophy and ethics fit in and realises the laws will fit with philosophy and ethics rather than the other way around.