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-----