Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 21 November 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Assisted Dying

Access to Palliative Care and Social Supports: Discussion

Dr. Una Molloy:

It is important to ensure that people have very intense psychological assessments and that there is plenty of time when people make a decision like this, or attempt to do so. Perhaps they do it because they feel they have nowhere else to go. The TILDA study - I think - looked at older people who had said in the last month that they had a wish to die. When they came back two years later, 80% of them said they did not have a wish to die and that was just how they felt at a particular time. That is really important because when people are shocked and vulnerable, they make decisions that are perhaps not the correct ones.