Sir, – Dr Conor O’Mahony (Opinion, January 15th) argues that the inability of the Director of Public Prosecutions to publish guidelines setting out the circumstances and context when prosecution will ensue of a person accused of being implicated in assisted suicide is “surreptitious and insufficient”.
The Criminal Law (Suicide) Act 1993 deems that suicide is no longer a crime but prescribes a jail term not exceeding 14 years for a person convicted on indictment of aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring the suicide of another person. The crime of assisting suicide is unusual in the sense that it entails assisting someone in doing something which is not itself a crime. But guidelines to fetter and constrain the freedom to prosecute a person accused of assisting another person to commit suicide could also be open to a great deal of abuse and unintended consequences, as well as acting as a straitjacket on the public interest and on public morality.
The independence and discretion of the DPP is fundamental to underpinning the integrity of our criminal legal system and discretion is exercised routinely across a broad spectrum of criminal considerations. If that discretion were to be constrained by the guidelines that Dr O’Mahony advocates that would essentially legitimise euthanasia in Ireland; diminish the legal protection already in place; jeopardise the relationship of trust that ought to exist between a doctor and patient and disregard the complexity that is unique to each case.
Ireland was ranked 4th in a 2010 quality end-of-life survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit, ahead of Luxembourg, Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands where assisted suicide is legal. Over 13,900 deaths by euthanasia and assisted suicide were officially reported in the Netherlands between 2007 and 2011 and the underlying trend is escalating each year.
How would organisations whose mission is to cater for those with a life-threatening disability react if an “option to kill” culture was introduced into the Irish legal system masquerading as generic guidelines?
We should be deeply proud of and support the services that are providing care to the terminally ill so that they live with the greatest possible dignity, while accepting natural demise, but doing everything possible to maintain their personal comfort and serenity. – Yours, etc,