Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

First, I wish to second the amendment to the Order of Business tabled by my colleague, Senator Higgins, and join in congratulating both the Leader and Senator Higgins on their news. Amid all the talk of marriages and babies, unfortunately, my comments will take a different turn. In the past two weeks, I have buried another three friends. I have attended three different funerals with three different families of people who died way too young. In the last two months since I have been on the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Assisted Dying, I have been watching lots of documentaries and films, and reading lots of commentary, on death. I am not really making a point about where people stand in that conversation. It is more that when I am watching somebody reach the end of their life in their 70s or 80s, when they have lived a full natural life, I find myself not being overwhelmed by the fact that a person is choosing to die, but envious of the fact that they could live so long to even have that moral dilemma to be able to think about when they want to die after living a full life. I find myself thinking about how unfair and outrageous it is that in a community like mine and others around the country it is almost normal to lose many people on a monthly and weekly basis. I remember listening to the 2Pac song "Changes" as a ten-year-old, and its lyrics, "That's just the way it is". It is probably where I got my politics from. I believed that for years. I was comfortable to believe that it is just the way it is, because then you feel like nothing can change or you do not have the power to change it, or to change your own circumstances. The thing is, it is not normal, it is not okay and we should not be living like this, where death comes to so many people so quickly. When you pull back the threads on it, poverty and inequality lie deep under so many of those deaths. To finish, I propose that we invite the Taoiseach in to discuss his plans for the child poverty unit he has established in his Department and the implementation of them. Most of the issues I work on may appear varied, but inequality and child poverty are at the heart of all of them. I think we should have a discussion with the Taoiseach around his plans in that area.