A group of GPs are to publicly declare its support for the pending bill aimed at allowing terminally ill people to end their own lives.
With the deadline for submissions to the Oireachtas justice committee falling this month, focus is again turning to the controversial bill which passed second stage in the Dáil in October after the Government lost the vote.
As the Irish Examiner reports, following Zoom meetings with the bill’s primary sponsor, People Before Profit TD Gino Kenny, a group of doctors are now willing to back the bill, a move which will be seen as significant.
Mr Kenny said that another community group, End of Life Ireland, will next week publicly announce its backing of the bill, which will be the subject of public hearings this Dáil term.
Mr Kenny accepts that those backing the bill, whether they are medical experts or not, will not be speaking for the entirety of their sectors, and that the issue is deeply divisive.
Supporters of the Dying with Dignity Bill pictured at the Dáil in 2020: Tom Curran, Vicky Phelan, Gino Kenny TD, and Gail O’Rorke. File Picture: Gareth Chaney/Collins
The deadline for submissions to the committee is January 22nd, with public hearings to begin shortly thereafter. The committee is expected to produce a final report with recommendations before the summer recess.
Mr Kenny is prepared to allow his bill, as it currently stands, to be amended.
“The bill will change during the process,” he said. "But the backing of medics would be significant, that has been the missing part up to his point.
However, there is opposition to the bill within the Dáil. Independent Kerry TD and member of the Rural Independent Group, Michael Healy-Rae, said that he is not in favour of relaxing the laws.
While expressing sympathy for those who are proposing this bill, he said: “One man brings you into the world — his name is God — and one man takes you out, and his name is God. I am not saying I am right. I am not making light of anyone else’s position.”
The bill seeks to make provision for the assistance in achieving a dignified and peaceful end of life in a qualifying person.
The rationale behind the bill is to give a person the legal and medical right of the authorisation of assisted dying where that person is suffering from a terminal illness.
If enacted, the bill would give a medical practitioner the legal right to provide assistance to a qualifying person to end his or her own life in accordance with the terms set out in the act.
Attitudes are changing to the issue of assisted dying. The public are ahead of Parliamentarians in wanting to see change in the law. October’s vote in the Dáil to progress the DWD 20 bill was a pivotal moment that will eventually see the law changing in Ireland and elsewhere.. https://t.co/bo5q69e4Cm
— Gino Kenny TD (@Ginosocialist) December 19, 2020
A person is a qualifying person if their terminal illness is verified as such by two medical practitioners.
The diagnosis of the medical practitioners must be that the illness is incurable, progressive, and is one which cannot be reversed by treatment, and that the person is likely to die as a result of that illness or complications relating to it, the bill states.
