Insurance companies are paying out for euthanasia and assisted suicide as the practices become ‘normalised, the EU Ombudsman said.
Speaking at a conference in Dublin on ‘Strengthening the Voice of Older People’, Emily O’Reilly warned that Ireland cannot avoid a debate on euthanasia and assisted suicide as populations across the European Union age.
Quoted in The Irish Times newspaper, Ms O’Reilly warned delegates: “I do not think that I would be wrong to speculate that over the next few decades, as the older population increases, as people live longer but with chronic ailments such as dementia, that new cultural norms will develop around these matters and that Ireland will not be immune to these.”
Pointing out that such debates are “well under way in other countries” she added: “It would appear that some health insurance companies are already providing insurance to pay for euthanasia and assisted suicide, a dry commercial procedure that further embeds the normalising of what to us in this country is not considered to be a normal act.”
As a result of this, Ms O’Reilly asked whether a growing ‘normalisation’ of euthanasia and assisted suicide would cause a change in how governments treat the weakest members of society and “whether older people themselves will come under increasing pressure to end lives that others might consider to be burdensome”.
For those opposing such a normalisation, the Ombudsman concluded, “cultures of care and protection of human dignity need to be built by all of us who think at all about this world and the consideration that we give each to the other and especially so when others need us to stand beside them and to protect them from all harm — to be their voice when theirs has been stilled”.
