After the Supreme Court Ruling on the right-to-die case in 1995, the Irish Medical Council was deeply unhappy. The court had ruled that keeping someone alive via gastrostomy tube feeding amounted to medical treatment, not just to care. As such, then, it could be lawfully discontinued. A member of the Medical Council, Dr John Monaghan, speaking on his own behalf, said afterwards in an interview, published the next day, that any doctor who cooperated with this Supreme ruling ma

The Irish Medical Council has 25 members. 12 of these are elected by their peers from the Irish Medical Profession; they are elected doctors, in other words. The other 13, the majority, are appointed by the government; they are non-elected lay people with government affiliations. The 12 doctor-appointed members tend to be conservatives who canvassed their conservative colleagues for votes to be elected in the first place.