Tom Curran of Exit International supports the ‘right’ of a healthy woman to die via assisted suicide in Switzerland, along with her husband who Mr Curran describes as ”quite ill”.

Mr Curran is a well-known campaigner in Ireland for assisted suicide. Exit International supports the right of any adult to die by suicide, with the help of someone else if needed, once they can make a ‘rational’ decision to do so. The person need not be suffering from any illness.

Speaking on RTE’s ‘Claire Byrne Live’ on Monday, Mr Curran explained why he is currently in Switzerland: “The main reason I’m here is to meet a couple of people who are travelling to Switzerland to avail of their [Switzerland’s] very humane way of dealing with this issue, where they will allow people to travel to their country to die, to be helped to die”.

He continued: “So I’m meeting them, I’ve known them for quite some time, and I’m meeting them to say goodbye to them. I’m also meeting with some other people I’ve known from this particular campaign”.

Describing the couple, he said: “They’re an elderly couple, one of them is quite sick, and the other one has decided they just don’t want to live without them. So that’s their reason for travelling to Switzerland, where they have a humane, civilised attitude to it and will help them to go together”.

When it was put to him by Claire Byrne that the woman is healthy, and this might make some people feel uncomfortable, he said: “It’s not my place to judge anybody. I have no right to tell anybody else what they should or shouldn’t do”.

Exit International is behind a new suicide pod called ‘Sarco’, after ‘sarcophagus’, which a person can climb into and activate into order to kill themselves. The machine is flooded with nitrogen, reducing oxygen levels rapidly. The person inside loses consciousness and dies in approximately 10 minutes.

The machine has gained legal approval in Switzerland.

The founder of Exit International, Dr Philip Nitschke, says: “At Exit, we believe that it is a fundamental human right for every adult of sound mind, to be able to plan for the end of their life in a way that is reliable, peaceful & at a time of their choosing”.

A campaign to allow assisted suicide is gathering momentum in Ireland.