Ms Sin?ad Gibney:

As a commission, we have not yet come to a position on whether we support physician-assisted dying. That is not to say that we will not come to a position at some point. As most of the committee's members will know, our role is to monitor law, policy and practice, in particular the human rights and equality elements of those. We have a broad mandate and we respond as and when we can to the particular issues that arise, which is why our focus on this issue so far has been on the Private Members' Bill that was before the Oireachtas a couple of years ago. It is a matter that we will examine further but it may be the case that we never come to a position on assisted dying. What we do is highlight and tease out what rights and equality issues are invoked when legislators are dealing with issues. We will assist them with our advice in that regard.