A report for the Oireachtas justice committee on Kenny’s ‘Dying with Dignity Bill’ found a number of “issues” with the proposed legislation, such as a jail term of no more than one year for breaking the law, compared with the current 14-year penalty for assisting a suicide.

The paper from the Oireachtas research unit is expected to be published this week and to be debated by the committee next month.

James Lawless, chairman of the Oireachtas justice committee, pointed out that assisted suicide legislation endorsed by referendum last year in New Zealand ran to “several hundred pages”, whereas Kenny’s bill is just five pages long. “Without expressing anything about the merits of the bill before us, that in itself registers a note of caution as a very crude metric, and suggests it is likely to require significant checks and balances in a comprehensive legal framework,” said Lawless.