Dr. Deirdre Collins:

As general practitioners we fully acknowledge there are many ways in which we can help and care for patients all the way through their lives and there are times when we find this extremely difficult. I acknowledge the point made by Deputy Lahart that there is pain which is very difficult to control. This brings us back to the reason we are here, which is to speak about safeguards. Safeguards still have to govern these conversations, particularly with regard to capacity and oversight. In oversight and governance we are speaking about medical diagnosis, pathways, resourcing, reportage, review, moving into palliative care, as Deputy Lahart so well expressed, and protecting the patient-doctor relationship. This relationship goes both ways. We tend to say it as "doctor-patient" but it is equally the "patient-doctor" relationship.