Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 30 January 2024

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Assisted Dying

System for Assisted Dying and Alternative Policies: Discussion

Professor Roderick MacLeod:

No, I am not at the moment.

That may be a reflection of the fact that it is relatively new legislation which only came into force in November 2021. The other aspect is that relatively few medical practitioners are prepared to take on the role of helping people to have assisted dying. The difficulty I have with the New Zealand legislation, as well as the reporting in respect of the legislation and assisted deaths, is that there is not enough publicly available information to know exactly how the system is working. We get the bare minimum of information despite several of us asking the Ministry of Health if it would be prepared to collect more accurate data in order that, in line with Professor White's statements, we can build evidence to say this is or is not working well. It is currently relatively secretive. We do not know, for example-----