Dying ‘need more rights than last rites’

MORE rights than just the last rites are needed at the end of life, the head of the Irish Human Rights Commission has urged.

While death itself was inevitable, injustice, poverty and poor end-of-life care need not be, commission president Dr Maurice Manning said.

“Both as citizens and as a society, we need to break the taboo that surrounds death and assert clearly that when it comes to end-of-life we need more rights than the last rites and we also need to develop a greater sense of personal responsibility and put effective systems in place to enable people to act responsibly,” he said.