Irish TD launches fresh attempt to legalise euthanasia

A Bill to legalise state-sponsored suicide and euthanasia has been launched in the Dáil Éireann.

Deputy Gino Kenny’s Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill 2024 seeks to allow vulnerable people to access medical help to be killed.

Kenny’s 2022 Bill prompted the formation of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Assisted Dying, which recently recommended the law be liberalised, despite overwhelming opposition.

Qualifying criteria

Under Kenny’s proposals, adults who have been resident in either the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland for at least a year, and are expected to die of a terminal illness within a “specified time-frame”, will be eligible for death by lethal drugs.

The Bill also allows people without a terminal diagnosis to request assisted suicide or euthanasia in cases deemed to be of “unbearable suffering that cannot be alleviated to a level the person finds acceptable”.

A ‘qualifying person’ must be assessed to ensure they have the mental capacity to make an informed decision, are not suffering a mental illness, and have made the decision “free from coercion”.

Eligible patients may take the prescribed poison themselves, or if this is “not feasible”, can ask a doctor to do it.

Natural death

Ahead of Kenny’s renewed bid, in a pastoral letter to parishioners, the Roman Catholic Bishops of Ireland spoke out against “legislation that would facilitate assisted suicide or euthanasia”.

They called for palliative care services to be made more widely available “so that no one is made to feel that either suffering, or caring, is unbearable”.

And they warned that by removing end-of-life protections, “the State would contribute to undermining the confidence of people who are terminally ill, who want to be cared for and want to live life as fully as possible until death naturally comes”.

Vulnerable lives at risk

In March, those members of the Oireachtas committee on ‘assisted dying’ who opposed its pro-assisted suicide recommendations released a separate report warning against changing the law.

The Minority Recommendations and Explanatory Report stated: “The case has not been established, whereas the case against any change is overwhelming. There are no lives not worth living. We recommend that the existing ban on assisted dying be maintained without exceptions.”

Instead, the dissenting members said funding should be directed towards ensuring “high-quality palliative care” is available across the country, as well as mental health services for the elderly and those receiving a terminal diagnosis.

Writing on X, Senator Ronan Mullen said, “we are not islands”, but “a tangled web of interconnected and vulnerable lives, all of which are worth living. Legislation for assisted dying would endanger the lives and happiness of many people.”