Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

The figure of €110,000 is misleading because many coroners' salaries come from Departments other than mine. On the issue of the powers of coroners, in the past we had an overly timid approach to their powers. As the Deputy will recall, when suicide was a crime, it was held by the courts that a coroner could not find that suicide was the cause of death because it was an imputation of criminality against the person who committed suicide. That was an absurdity because it turned a limited jurisdiction to investigate the circumstances of a death into a ridiculous charade with regard to how to deal with a suicide case, cases of which are very sensitive from the point of view of the family etc.

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