From top: The Dying With Dignity Bill 2020 Irish Palliative Medicine Consultants’ Association (IPMCA)

Tomorrow

The Dying with Dignity Bill 2020, which proposes making provision for ‘assistance in achieving a dignified and peaceful end of life to qualifying persons’, will be voted on in the Dáil.

The Private Members’ Bill, tabled by Gino Kenny, sponsored by Bríd Smith, Paul Murphy; Mick Barry and Richard Boyd Barrett, is being considered by Sinn Fein, The Green Party and supported by the Labour Party. The bill can be read in full here.

It is expected that the government will table an amendment to the bill that would hold it up for a year and require a special Oireachtas committee to examine the issue of assisted dying.

This morning, 17 members of the Irish Palliative Medicine Consultants’ Association (IPMCA) expressed their objection in a letter to The Irish Times:

As individuals and members of the Irish Palliative Medicine Consultants’ Association (IPMCA), we are gravely concerned by any proposal to legislate for assisted suicide and euthanasia in Ireland.

Based on our collective experience over many decades of providing specialist care to thousands of individuals in Ireland and their families each year, we have closely observed the experiences of people who have lived and are living with serious illness.

The threats of the proposed Bill to healthcare in Ireland, to the true meaning of the doctor-patient relationship and to the future of what we know compassionate and supportive specialist palliative care to be are many.

We worry about the impact on people who already struggle to have their voices heard in our society – older adults, the disabled, those with mental illness and others. We worry that the most vulnerable are those who may be made to feel a burden to their families and come under pressure to end their lives prematurely.

Our experiences tell us that many in our society don’t really know what dying is like, or how rare it is that severe pain cannot be controlled. Most people do not see that within the easing of physical, psychological or spiritual distress and addressing people’s fears, hopes, sadness and loss, the goal of palliative care remains to enhance the living of each life which often transforms the experiences of living, dying and bereavement for individual patients and their families.

We are convinced that as dying with dignity is already present within healthcare in Ireland, no change to our current laws is required.

Dying With Dignity Bill 2020

Palliative medicine and dying with dignity (Irish Times Letters)