A global campaign group that lobbies for radically expansive euthanasia legislation has officially launched in Ireland.

Exit International was formed in 1997 by Philip Nitschke, an Australian doctor and creator of the Sarco pod, a euthanasia device. The organisation says “a good death is a fundamental human right of all rational adults” and they want assisted suicide for anyone who finds life ‘unbearable’.

Exit’s aim in Ireland is to lobby for right-to-die legislation to be passed, and not be limited to seriously ill people. “Exit advocates for the introduction of a Swiss-style law where help depends upon the motive of the person assisting, rather than the terminal illness status of the patient requesting medical help,” its website says.

Tom Curran, the partner of the late right-to-die campaigner Marie Fleming, is to lead the Irish branch.

Curran has been Exit International’s Europe co-ordinator since 2010. Fleming, his late partner, lost a landmark legal challenge to overturn the ban on assisted suicide in 2013. Fleming had advanced multiple sclerosis and argued that the law infringed her constitutional rights because the severity of her disability prevented her from ending her own life without assistance.