Professor William Binchy:

I thank the Cathaoirleach. I believe members have the opening statement with them, so I will speak to it rather than reading it if that is okay.

By way of introduction, I will say why I am here. I am here because I hope I can give a perspective based on old age. I have been a barrister for a number of years and an academic for a number of years. I was a member of the Irish Human Rights Commission for ten years and I worked in law reform for about 18 years, specifically on legislative matters directly related to family law, including the Family Law (Maintenance of Spouses and Children) Act and the Family Home Protection Act. I was subsequently in the Law Reform Commission for many years. I have an interest in human rights independently of having had that position with the human rights commission; I am interested in human rights essentially around the world. I have a strong interest in the development of human rights in Africa and a number of Asian countries, including Timor-Leste. That is my background. I say that simply because it is important for the committee to know we have to keep a world view on this, rather than simply focusing on the immediate question that is before the Oireachtas.

It is important to have the wider perspective. I am suggesting that at the core of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the core of all human rights international instruments, is the very simple notion, which is contestable and unproven if I may say, namely, the inherent dignity of every human being. Every human being has equal worth and dignity not because the law gives it to them; they have have it even if the law takes it away from them. Every human being has equal dignity and worth. That is the core value upon which we should approach this particular question, which is the question of whether there should be intentional taking of human life.

That value judgment resonates throughout society. It is fair to say that the argument for assisted dying, assisted suicide or assisted termination of life, however one describes it, is effectively based on autonomy. I suggest to the committee that we all love and respect autonomy - we like our own and we respect it in others - but autonomy, like every single entitlement, has its limits. The right to autonomy ends when it causes damage to others.

In this particular context where we speak about tragic matters, when someone takes their own life, we understand that it may have been an autonomous decision but it resonates through society - through the family, through the friends, through the school people and through the workplace. It is a tragedy and we recognise the huge impact that an autonomous decision to take one's life involves. That is what we are talking about in the context of medical perspective, which is the area in which this particular issue arises.

The argument that I suggest to the committee is worth considering is that there are really two limits or two issues that could be considered here. The first is the logic of assisted termination of life by a person who is autonomous and, on all reckoning, is shortly going to die. If that is accepted as a principle, what is the logical consequence of that? The logical consequence of that means it is very hard to say “What about a case where the person is not going to die imminently but is going to die shortly?” If you say “What about a case where a person is not going to die shortly but, on the contrary, is going to live for really rather a long time in circumstances where they want to die?”, is that not logically causing more pain to that individual rather than denying them the entitlement? The logic of accepting autonomy in the stark cases of imminent death flows over logically to make it logically impossible to deny the arguments in favour of extending the scope of entitlement further. If we have any doubt about that, we can simply look at the experience in countries that have taken this step and we see that that logic does not last very long. It extends outwards and is continuing to extend outwards.

What about a case of a person who is lacking autonomy? They are remarkably unhappy with their life at this moment and that is clear, but they lack autonomy. Are there any circumstances in which it would be appropriate that a person with a mental disability should be entitled to end their life or entitled to have their life ended? Unless one comes forward with good arguments such that we will not do it, the logic is that, yes, there are arguments. If we belief that life is futile, if we believe that it is better to be dead than alive, then in those circumstances there are very strong arguments for extending the scope of the entitlement to terminate life very widely to those who wish to die, not necessarily for medical reasons at all, and for those who cannot exercise that autonomous choice because they lack autonomy but are still in a situation where the judgment of the doctors or, indeed, of society is to ask “Is this life worth continuing?”

The core value here arises from the wisdom of generations. Society is a cold word, and if it is the individual versus society, then I am on the side of the individual. However, if you take society not as meaning the cold abstraction of some notion of a political entity, but rather the accumulated wisdom of generations over millennia who all, every generation, have addressed this particular question, the judgment of millennia is that the taking of human life is something that should not happen, even taking human life where the person who is proposing the taking of human life is proposing it for that person himself or herself.

When we think of the flow-through consequences, the right to autonomy is restricted, if we like, by the damage that it may cause others, and there are many others, although you or I do not know who they are because they are those people - older people, people with disabilities, people who are in a vulnerable situation - who feel that they are a burden to society. On that basis, we know from the experience of other countries that such people do, in fact, end their lives. That is the price. That is the challenge.