Ellen Coyne: I wouldn’t trust Ireland with an assisted dying regime – our track record on disability and older people’s rights isn’t good enough

'The choice to no longer want to live can be freely and thoughtfully made. But is it a choice that we sit comfortably with if it’s made because of the circumstances of a poor health, social care or housing system'

Ellen Coyne

We’re the self-styled arbiters of “good deaths”. Ireland knows how to ritualise a passing, and to pay grief the respect of looking it in the eye.

Our national ethos is that a dignified death should be a birthright. Perhaps this is why the recent move from a group of TDs and senators to call for an assisted dying law, while headline news, did not really initiate a hugely terse or controversial debate. Maybe it’s because we’re a little battle scarred from too many other heated rights-based debates over the years. Or perhaps it’s simply because our own unique brushes with illness, death, disability and grief have neutered our ability to judge. Most Irish families are probably familiar with the nuanced ways that a terminal diagnosis can rupture and shift the dynamic of a family. And maybe those that are not familiar feel it’s a privilege to have such matters be none of their business.