Sinn Féin to back Dying with Dignity Bill

Sinn Féin looks set to back the Dying with Dignity Bill, according to its health spokesman David Cullinane. (L to R) Tom Curran, Vicky Phelan, Gino Kenny TD and Gail O’Rorke during the launch of Dying with Dignity Bill.

Sinn Féin looks set to join the Social Democrats and the Labour Party in backing Gino Kenny’s Dying with Dignity Bill.

The main opposition party’s health spokesman David Cullinane has made it clear that he and his colleagues are likely to support its passage at second stage.

“This is an issue that has to be progressed. I have been taken by people who have made compassionate and intelligent representations. I think we need to be thorough and we need to give it as much pre-legislative scrutiny as possible. Yes, the bill is to be supported but we need to get it right,” Mr Cullinane said.

The Government has been called upon to grant a free vote on a bill seeking to make terminally ill people able to end their own lives.

At a press conference at Leinster House, Solidarity People Before Profit TD Gino Kenny and Labour leader Alan Kelly called for support for bill.

They were joined by cancer campaigner Vicky Phelan, Tom Curran (husband of the late Marie Fleming) and Gail O’Rorke, who was acquitted of helping her friend end her own life.

He said he fully understands people will have differing views on the sensitive issue, but said the bill is about starting a discussion on the merits of this legislation.

In her appeal to TDs, Ms Phelan said: “I would ask all of them, all 160 TDs to put their opinions to one side and try to put themselves in my shoes, as a young mother with young children”.

“Palliative care does not always work. I have seen a number of people over the past two and a half years who have died in a hospice. It is great when it works but there are times when it doesn’t when there is a certain amount of suffering that no amount of pain management can get on top of. I don’t want my children to see me like that,” Ms Phelan said.

Daniel McConnell: Dignity law would have allowed Marie Fleming die in peace #iestaff https://t.co/LBaAA6D9hZ

— Daniel McConnell (@McConnellDaniel) September 14, 2020

“What I am asking is to be given a choice, that is what I am asking from TDs. If they can to have a free vote, this is an issue of conscience. It is very rigid,” she added.

Referring to her own depression, she said that if this law existed without safeguards she may have sought to use it, but she is backing it because there are rigid safeguards contained in the bill.

Mr Curran spoke movingly about his late wife Marie, his willingness to aid her in her choice and his work in drafting a previous incarnation of this bill, which former minister John Halligan introduced in 2015.