Oireachtas told of concerns from disabled community over potential assisted dying laws
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If a precedent is set around assisted dying and euthanasia the process will become the norm, the Oireachtas has been warned.
The committee for assisted dying has met again to hear from representatives on protecting vulnerable groups and individuals, including people with disabilities and older people.
In a powerful testimony, disability activist Dr Rosaleen McDonagh explained how she believes that disabled people, including those with terminal illnesses, are treated as people who are “not rights holders".
"The State needs to engage with us in a real and concrete fashion," she told the committee. "The perception of illness and disability is understood as loss of dignity, loss of agency, and bodily integrity is presented as the loss of personhood.
"This issue is of huge concern and relevance to disabled people. We need to be central in this shaping of legislation. Supporting disabled people and those facing terminal illness to have arrangements in place regarding the supports we need is paramount.
“Every day, every time I come to this discussion, I understand your difficulties. But, I suppose, that’s the difference between being disabled and not being disabled—I don’t mean that in a facetious way. People will vote for you to be a Senator, but they won’t ever vote for someone like me.
“My fear is that when we set precedents—informal or informal, legal or general—precedents then become the norm."
Director of the National Disability Authority (NDA), Dr Aideen Hartney, noted that should the committee recommend introducing laws on assisted dying, there could be concerns about its implementation.
She said: “It can be possible for initial safeguards to be reduced over time, increasing the risk of abuse of the concept for groups in more vulnerable situations.”
A framework would need to be put in place to ensure that “poverty or lack of access to funds does not become a reason for people to choose assisted dying,” she added.
Chair of the Irish Society of Physicians in Geriatric Medicine, Professor Dermot O’Neill, explained that while there was no jurisdiction where assisted dying was compulsory, people often get “dragged into it".
“What we see is normative conformity, where we see standards slip around providing adequate and appropriate care—people feel ‘it’s there and someone should be doing it’—then there is that slippage in providing care.”