New Campaign Aimed To Legalise Assisted Suicide In Ireland

A new euthanasia campaign group has been established in Ireland.

The Campaign for the Legislation of Assisted Suicide has been launched with the stated aim of allowing Irish people who wish to avail of assisted suicide to travel to Switzerland where it is legal, but also to change the law in Ireland to bring about legal assisted suicide in the Republic.

Tom Curran is one of the three founding members of the campaign.

Curran is a coordinator with Exit International Ireland, an Irish group with about 120 members, which is part of a wider international assisted suicide information and advocacy organisation.

Mr Curran, whose wife Marie has multiple sclerosis, has pledged to assist his wife in ending her own life should she take the decision to do so in future.

He said the purpose of the group was to campaign to “provide safeguards for people like myself, to allow partners or friends, not just to travel, but to assist them in taking their own lives within Ireland. Suicide has been legal in Ireland since 1993 so it’s quite legal for people to take their own life.”

“People with disabling terminal illnesses are deprived of the right to take their own life because their disability prevents them,” he added.

However, Dr Regina McQuillan, a consultant in palliative medicine and spokeswoman of the Irish Association for Palliative Care, said changing the law to allow a person’s life to be ended with the assistance of another would “change society’s attitude to and relationship with people with disabilities or terminal illnesses”.

She said she was very sympathetic to those who are disabled or terminally ill who find their situation intolerable she believes that “although an individual’s autonomy is important, it is not absolute because we are all a part of society”.

Figures released by Dignitas, the Swiss assisted suicide organisation, show that one Irish person took their own life with it last year.

This brings to seven the number of Irish people who are recorded as having taken their own lives at Dignitas since the organisation began offering assisted suicides in 1998. A further 29 Irish people are listed as members of the organisation.

Last year two women, who were preparing to travel from the Republic to an assisted suicide clinic in Switzerland, were intercepted by gardaí as they went to book their tickets in a travel agent.

Under Irish law “aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring the suicide of another” carries a penalty of 14 years imprisonment and is an arrestable offence.

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