Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 7 November 2023
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Assisted Dying
Protecting Autonomy and Assessing Decision-making Capacity: Discussion
Mr. Justin McKenna:
I will give my background. I am a solicitor, so I see these things from a legal point of view as a practitioner. One of the points I want to make is that while I qualified in the 1970s, it was not until 1996 that we had a law that allowed people to exercise autonomy in respect of their own care in the event that they lost capacity. That was the Powers of Attorney Act 1996. It was Mervyn-----