Minister: ‘My late wife’s battle with cancer is why I want to introduce euthanasia laws’
FINIAN McGrath made a promise to his wife Anne that he would never let her die in pain. And as Anne lay in a hospital bed fighting a losing battle against 14 years of cancer, Mr McGrath would insist on the nurses increasing his wife’s dose of morphine to ease the pain of her final moments.
Now, on the 10th anniversary of his wife’s death, the Disability Minister has spoken about the trauma surrounding Anne’s death and has decided to back cancer victim Vicky Phelan’s call to introduce euthanasia laws in Ireland.
Speaking to Independent. ie’s ‘Floating Voter’ podcast, Mr McGrath said: “The one thing Anne used to say to me was ‘Don’t let me die in pain’ and I did that, so any time she was in pain they increased the morphine. And I would do that for anybody and any member of my family, and I would say the same about myself if I was in that situation.
“What Vicky Phelan said in recent days brought it back to me again, the whole issue of that, and I think patients have a right to do these things and I think a lot of the medical professionals privately understand that but they won’t go there.”
Mr McGrath said “some of the hospitals” in this country will “increase the amount of morphine you get to help you with the pain and sometimes then the person just goes to sleep”.
The cabinet minister said thousands of families discuss how a terminally ill loved one’s life will end every year and insisted he would never make any moral judgment about a person who wished to chose when they pass away.
“If people want to make the decision themselves that’s their personal decision, I would be very supportive of them,” he said.
The minister said his wife was first hit with breast cancer which was successfully treated but then suffered a setback five years after the initial diagnosis.
The disease then made its way into her bones and in her final days it took over her pancreas and liver. Anne was in her early 50s when she died.
Mr McGrath says his wife was surprisingly upbeat throughout her illness and was driven by a desire to raise their two girls, Caoimhe and Clíodhna.
“Anne was very positive, she was determined to raise the girls and she achieved that,” he said.
“We are plodding along but there is no point in saying it didn’t have a devastating affect on the two girls.”
Clíodhna, the minister’s youngest daughter, was born with Down syndrome and is the main inspiration behind his long-running campaign to raise the plight of people with disabilities.
When she was first born doctors didn’t think Clíodhna would make it and she underwent intensive heart surgery in Crumiln Children’s Hospital.
But now, as a young woman in her 30s, she is taking after her father and is something of an activist in her own right. Mr McGrath said there was a certain amount of “sadness” when Clíodhna was born, which people with Down syndrome children don’t generally talk about. He said: “You’re kind of shocked. You don’t know what you’re going to do. You visualise them in 10 years’ time, 20 years’ time. What are you going to do?
“When we got over the initial shock we just knuckled down and, me being a bit of a mouth, we got involved in the parents’ association of Down Syndrome Ireland. Then I became treasurer and then I became chairperson of the Dublin branch and then I got into the whole idea of fighting for people with disabilities and little did I think I would end up as a minister for disabilities,” he added.
The minister said he does worry about who will look after Clíodhna when he passes on and said this is a huge concern for all families of children with intellectual disabilities.
“It is an awful worry, but the good news is we have set up a system which is the cradle to grave,” he said.
“I am meeting all these parents in their 70s and 80s and they haven’t got long left and they want me to make sure their adult son or daughter has a service so I am using the final budget I will probably ever have to prioritise those cases,” he added.