Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

Okay. Apologies for that.

I was disappointed that the committee ignored much of the scientific professional expert advice. Assisted suicide goes against the advice of the majority of consultants in palliative care. No group works with greater compassion or greater experience and with greater knowledge than those who are working in palliative care. Their association opposes moves to introduce assisted suicide. The Association for Palliative Care Medicine in Britain has opposed previous efforts to introduce assisted suicide. Disability rights groups in Britain have opposed changes to the law introducing assisted suicide stating that it would provide an illusionary choice if disabled people were not offered the proper support. The British Medical Association has stated that what we need is improvements in palliative care to allow for people to die with dignity. I met the Irish Palliative Medicine Consultants Association. Its consideration around assisted suicide is motivated by the fear that people, when they are told that they have a terminal illness or uncontrollable pain, will at that point choose assisted suicide but modern medicine has great opportunity for people to be able to control pain and to control fear as well.

There was a large study by the European Association for Palliative Care. It found 20% of those surveyed reported seriously considering assisted suicide for themselves when they found out their bad news of a terminal diagnosis but follow-up interviews found the majority of these patients had changed their minds after six months because distress, fear and anxiety are frequently transitory states of mind and can be radically lowered by good palliative care. The international experience clearly demonstrates that when assisted suicide is introduced it puts a phenomenal burden on many people in society. People who are older in other countries that have introduced assisted suicide often report that they feel they are a burden and feel that they should not be a burden any more and as a result they choose this.

One study in Washington State in the United States shows that for 56% of the people who selected assisted suicide, one of the top three reasons was they felt they were a burden.

Here lies the problem. We cannot legislate for one person. Any law we bring in, even if it is for a very difficult situation motivated by compassion, is a law that will affect thousands of other individuals. In addition, when assisted suicide is introduced, it very much confuses the message around suicide in general. It is impossible to say that suicide is never the right choice and to also say that suicide is sometimes the right choice. In many jurisdictions where assisted suicide has been introduced, suicide among the general public also increases.

On investment in this issue, we should have assisted living. It is important to say that in some jurisdictions, because of the introduction of assisted suicide, help for older people and for people with serious disabilities has actually reduced. I am thinking of Canada, for example, which has the lowest investment in palliative care in the areas where assisted suicide is fully legal.

In California, a medical insurance company provides funding for assisted suicide but does not provide funding for chemotherapy, for example. Ireland has a poor level of investment in helping older people and the vulnerable. ALONE, for example, received 26,000 calls seeking support in the past year.

Today I met with representatives of Care Champions outside the gates of the Dáil. Care Champions is a campaign trying to get the Government to carry out a proper investigation into how Covid-19 was handled in this country, and to help people in nursing homes and hospitals. It is very important to realise that this country has significantly let down older people and people who are close to end of life just in the past five years. The HSE diverted staff and support from nursing homes into hospitals during the Covid-19 crisis. Many people, especially older people, died in horrendous circumstances by themselves in nursing homes and hospitals during that time.

While I understand that compassion is a motivation among some people who campaigned for this, I have no doubt that we are living in a very harsh society that has difficulty investing to support people who are in very difficult circumstances. Given the record of this country during Covid-19, I have very little trust in what will happen around assisted suicide in the future.

Finally, I do not believe that there is a foolproof system whereby we can be fully sure that if people choose assisted suicide, they are doing so completely on their own basis. This may be the case in certain cases but in many cases, the feeling that they are under pressure not to be a burden can be an internal feeling or can be an external feeling. I cannot see how we can foolproof and ensure that those people are protected in the future.

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