Tom Curran says assisted suicide trial should never have happened

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

Tom Curran said Gail O’Rorke’s assisted-suicide trial should never have come before the courts. His comments followed her acquittal of assisting in the suicide of her late friend Bernadette Forde. The proceedings were reported on 29 April 2015.

Curran’s partner, Marie Fleming, had unsuccessfully challenged the law banning assisted suicide in the Supreme Court in 2013. The report said the Supreme Court had ruled that prosecutions for assisted suicides were exclusively a matter for the Director of Public Prosecutions. Curran said the Supreme Court decision’s reference to using the same guidelines as those used in the UK meant O’Rorke should never have faced trial.