Lynn Ruane (Independent)
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I thank the witnesses for attending. As I only have a few minutes, I will ask three questions. Dignity has been mentioned a few times today and has been consistently raised in the more general conversation. What does Professor Binchy understand by dignity? What is dignity? When we look at this historically over time, right back to Rousseau and Kant, many different thinkers have addressed how we morally impose ideas of dignity and what dignity actually means. Is it a mental state? If we are saying it is inherent and that people have dignity and inherent worth, what exactly does that mean for one's existence?

I know that Professor Binchy is a legal adviser to the Pro Life Campaign and I am aware of the issues that organisation has been involved with over the years. In terms of my work in relation to poverty and women who are struggling on one-parent family payments, I have never seen the Pro Life Campaign featuring in that or in any of the other work I do in terms of trying to validate people's worth, dignity and value and promoting a life that is flourishing. The same is true in relation to mental health. What does dignity actually mean, beyond the philosophical context I referred to? What does it mean for the Pro Life Campaign? It seems to me that for that organisation, it is about life for life's sake and imposing control over people's agency and autonomy. I would like some insight into what Professor Binchy means by dignity and inherent worth.

My next question relates to the issue of real harm versus speculative harm. This is something we really need to consider. Most of us in this room are in the extremely privileged position of not having to think about our death right now. That does not mean we will not meet our death unexpectedly but we do not have to think about it. We are speaking here about people's pain, suffering and about how close or not close they are to their death but we are doing so from an extremely privileged position. We actually do not know what type of decision we would make in that moment, in the context of people's lives and the things they are facing. I invite Mr. Riley to tell us how we get a bit closer to hearing those voices. He mentioned different people in his contribution but those people are not here anymore. How do we actually hear from people who are having to make those decisions or are near the stage of having to do so? That is a crucial part that is missing from this process although I understand that if someone is at that stage, he or she is potentially not in a position to be in this room. There may be an onus on us as a committee to get a clearer picture through personal testimonies. Mr. Riley has given us testimony and I ask him to speak to that in the context of real harm versus speculative harm.

We keep talking about suicide and perhaps in a later session we should look at the impact of suicide. Professor Binchy is correct when he says that suicide has an enormous impact. It ranks higher than violent death or murder in communities in terms of how many people it actually ripples out to and impacts. However, there is a difference between suicide and a rational end to life. So many suicides happen as a response to some type of external pressure, to environmental conditions or as some sort of reaction to life, although not in all cases and some are very untimely. Are we missing a beat in terms of understanding the difference between unexpected suicide that comes out of the blue, that families are completely shocked by and did not anticipate or see coming as against somebody sitting down and rationally engaging with family and loved ones, choosing the how, choosing the conversations he or she will have, and being able to say goodbye in person. The impacts of those two scenarios, I imagine, will be very different. The impact of the death is, of course, going to be traumatic regardless but suicide in the conditions we are discussing, in communities across this country, has to be measured differently from death in an environment where somebody is able to engage with his or family near the end of his or her life about how that life ends. Even though there are impacts in both scenarios, we may be missing something in terms of understanding the difference between them.