Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 12 December 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Assisted Dying

Examination of Potential Consequences - Protecting and Enhancing the Provision of Palliative Care: Discussion

Dr. Matthew Dor?:

Yes, there is a proportion of deaths which are less desirable. Let us break them down. The proportion of deaths which are undesirable, a bad death so to speak, means different things to different people. Some people mean terminal agitation. The problem is we cannot predict that. By definition, if we do something pre-emptive before terminal agitation, we will be killing people or allowing assisted suicide to people who then do not go on to have terminal agitation. If we talk about bad death in terms of perception, some people will never perceive a death as a good thing because it is death. Some families never accept it. A third thing would be the-----