An Oireachtas Committee is set to recommend legislation that would allow terminally ill people with six to twelve months to live to avail of ‘assisted dying’.
The Joint Committee on Assisted Dying will release its report March 20, but the main outline was decided late Wednesday evening after several days’ deliberation.
It is currently understood that the proposed legislation will apply only to people diagnosed with an illness or condition that is incurable and irreversible, that will cause death within six months.
That timespan can be extended to twelve months for people with a neurodegenerative illness or condition. The committee reportedly says that the proposed legislation should also state that the illness, disease or condition must be causing suffering that cannot be relieved in a way that the person finds tolerable.
Gript understands that of the 14 committee members, nine voted in favour of the report, with three against and one abstaining.
A source claimed that little consideration was given by the committee to the question of safeguards, despite the “near unanimous” testimony of medical professionals from jurisdictions that currently provide assisted dying that the scope for the practice could expand beyond the terminally ill to include the mentally ill.
Gript also understands that a recommendation to remove the responsibility for the practice from the medical profession, out of respect for doctors’ widespread resistance to assisted dying, to other licensed providers was rejected, as was a recommendation to criminalise advertising assisted dying services or healthcare professionals initiating conversations about it with patients.
While Gript understands that the committee intends to recommend that “coercion” into assisted suicide be a criminal offence, concerns that “social coercion” could play a role in pressuring people into the practice were shrugged off.
No distinction seems to have been made between assisted suicide, which is self-administered, and euthanasia, which is administered by another.
The Joint Oireachtas Committee on Assisted Dying sat for nine months to discuss whether or not assisted dying ought to be legislated for, and during that time heard testimonies from those advocating both cases.