Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 28 November 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Assisted Dying

Assisted Dying in New Zealand and Australia: Discussion

Dr. Greg Mewett:

-----and he has not given me an opportunity to respond to a number of points he has made. I will just say that as a palliative care physician who has been deeply and completely involved in people's end-of-life care, my philosophical view is if a patient is going to die of an end-of-life illness then he or she should have a choice to bring about that death at an earlier stage when he or she has reached the limits of his or her suffering. I am not in a philosophical mindset to allow open slather, as Dr. Nitschke perhaps suggests. I work within a medical and legal framework that is working well in this state four and half years down the track. There has been no evidence of the slippery slope and runaway trains the Senator often talks about. That actually is an insult to-----