Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 11 July 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Assisted Dying

Developing a Legal Framework for Assisted Dying: Discussion

Professor David Albert Jones:

I am influenced by various people I have known who have spoken to me from the perspective of a disability. They have talked about the cost of their treatments and often feeling that they are a burden. They also spoke about find the extra burden they would feel if this was a possibility. People like Kevin Fitzpatrick and Dr. Nicholas Tonti-Filippini have expressed this in writing that from their own lived experience, they often find it difficult. Things like the cost of their treatment make it difficult for them to maintain a sense of their own worth or that life is worth carrying on with. This would just add to it, so I am drawing on the experience of other people