Dr. Louise Campbell:

My understanding is that apart from Switzerland, there is no provision in any other legislation for non-residents to be assisted to die, although this issue came up in a court case in Canada very recently. The residency criterion is, therefore, being looked at. This is emerging legislation in Australia. New South Wales has not even commenced its Act. That will happen in November but my understanding is that residency criteria are specified in all of those laws. The Northern Territory is the only state in Australia that has not introduced assisted dying legislation to date. It is all very new.

I will briefly talk about numbers to give the committee an idea of the position. In New Zealand, which has a slightly smaller population than Ireland, assisted dying accounted for 66 deaths last year, which was the first year after commencement. There were 206 applications for assisted dying and 81 withdrawals or deaths from natural or other causes, and 59 cases were still under assessment at the end of the year. Some 80% of those people were receiving palliative care and 6% of them were Mori, who account for between 12% and 14% of the population. As such, there is not a disproportionate impact on marginalised groups if we look at it from a racial perspective. In Oregon, there were 278 deaths after 431 prescriptions in 2021. These data are all from 2021. In Canada, there were 10,064 medical assistance in dying, MAID, provisions. I presume that means provisions for life-ending acts. In the Netherlands, there were 7,666 deaths. The numbers are always higher in bigger jurisdictions but in Oregon and New Zealand, which have populations of roughly the size of Ireland, the numbers have increased considerably, as Senator Mullen pointed out, since the original introduction of the laws. That is to be expected when something is made legal.