Niall Carson/Press Association via AP

Marie Fleming, a terminally-ill woman who suffers from multiple sclerosis, on Jan. 10, 2013.

A paralyzed Irish woman who says she is living in severe agony cannot commit suicide with the help of her partner, Ireland's Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The right to life in the country's constitution "does not import a right to die," the seven-judge court ruled.

Marie Fleming, 59, suffers from multiple sclerosis and is paralyzed from the neck down. She testified that she suffers nearly unbearable pain and that she fears choking because she cannot swallow. 

While suicide is no longer a crime in Ireland, Chief Justice Susan Denham ruled there is no constitutional right to it. The court noted that law makers could pass a law that would allow citizens to take their own lives, but thus far have not done so.

Lawyers for Fleming, a former lecturer at the University College Dublin, argued that because suicide is not a crime in Ireland, a disabled person should be able to receive help to kill themselves. Fleming's attorneys also argued their client's rights under the European Convention on Human Rights were being violated.

But in her ruling Denham said it is primarily for the states to administer their own laws on assisted suicide.

Fleming is suffering from a chest infection and could not be in the courtroom for the ruling. But her partner, Tom Curran, was present along with  the couple's three adult children. As the Denham read the ruling, the family held hands and cried, the Associated Press reported.

Despite the ruling, Curran told reporters outside the courthouse that he would help Fleming end her life if she chose to do so.
"It’s very difficult to understand how a person with a disability can be deprived of something that’s legally available to everybody else, every able-bodied person," Curran said, according to the Irish Times. "And for that not to be discriminatory under the constitution. That’s something we fail to understand."

Fleming's testified in December, and told the court that three years earlier she had considered killing herself when she still had movement in her arms. But Curran persuaded her not to and she refrained — a decision she said she now regrets.

Judges need to leave their benches and sit next to Fleming to hear her testimony since her voice is was so weak. 

"When you have to be showered, toileted and fed, you start to feel like a nobody," she testified, according to the Associated Press. "I want to go peacefully, in my own home, with the people I love around me."

Curran would face a maximum prison sentence of 14 years if convicted of assisting suicide.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Bernd Thissen / AFP - Getty Images

A laboratory assistant prepares a sample of lasagna for a DNA test at a veterinary research facility in Germany Thursay.

LONDON -- When officials in Ireland made a routine check on a few hamburgers, what they found made them nervous: One burger was actually nearly one-third horse.

It was a discovery that has sent shock waves reverberating across Europe.

Since the disturbing DNA test results were disclosed last month, horse meat has been found masquerading as beef in countries including the U.K., France, Germany, Sweden and Norway. 

A small amount of horse meat was also found by British officials to contain a banned drug that, in high enough doses, could be fatal, although U.K. Chief Medical Officer Sally Davies has stressed there is a "very low risk indeed" that eating contaminated meat would be harmful.

As supermarket shelves were cleared, meat suppliers in Ireland, the U.K., France, Cyprus, the Netherlands, Romania and elsewhere have come under scrutiny.

Jean-Philippe Arles / Reuters

A dump truck is filled up with blocks of meat at French meat processor Spanghero's factory in Castelnaudary near Toulouse, France, Friday.

Some in Western Europe have pointed the finger particularly at Romania, where a ban on horses in cities and the tough economic climate have been cited as reasons for a rise in exports of horse meat. The Romanians have insisted the meat was properly labeled as horse when it left the country, Reuters reported. 

According to French investigators, one French firm alone made a profit of $733,800 over six months by selling cheaper horse meat as beef in a supply chain involving 28 companies in 13 countries, Reuters reported. The company, Spanghero, protested its innocence Friday.

Intelligence agency Europol -- normally tasked with combating the trafficking of guns, drugs and humans -- was brought in to investigate what one British lawmaker has described as an “international criminal conspiracy.” Three arrests -- the first over the scandal -- were made in the U.K. on Thursday. 

Expert: Watch what you eat
Some officials believe only the “tip of the iceberg” has been revealed, and on Friday the European Union endorsed a major DNA-testing program to establish just how much unlabeled horse meat is being sold as beef or other foods.

For ManMohan Sodhi, a professor specializing in supply chains at London’s City University, the news has been a revelation.

“If you had talked to me a month ago, I would have said: ‘No, it would never happen; I completely believe in the [food supply] system,’” he said.

Now his message is “Watch out for what you eat.”

Sodhi compared the current situation to the first signs of the gross mismanagement of subprime mortgages that led to the banking crisis. “People began to uncover risks and suddenly there were too many problems,” he said.

He said large supermarkets like to deal with large suppliers who are in turn supplied by other firms and so on down to farmers and other actual food producers. At any point in the chain, someone could decide to cut costs by replacing a high-cost food with a cheap substitute.

Sodhi explained it was not in the interest of supermarkets to check their suppliers. This, he said, would be an added expense and would also make them legally liable if something went wrong.

Taking goods on trust meant they instead had “plausible deniability,” he said. “Then if something bad happens, all I do is put out an advertisement and say, ‘We really care about our customers, we’re doing everything we can … too bad somebody did something horrible.”

In a video message, Tim Smith, group technical director of supermarket giant Tesco, spoke of the firm's "unreserved apology" over the discovery of horse DNA in its frozen hamburgers and said it had dropped a supplier in Ireland.

But he also stressed the company was taking steps to ensure this never happened again.

Smith said Tesco planned to "launch a new program of activity which will test on a DNA fingerprinting basis all the meat and meat products that we source from our suppliers ... adding another layer of surveillance to help protect our customers."

On Thursday, a Tesco spokesman was unable to clarify exactly how extensive the DNA tests would be.

'Cynically and systematically duped'
Sodhi’s opinion that things could be far worse than they currently appear might be dismissed by some.

But a committee of British lawmakers that investigated the situation published a report Thursday that concluded the discoveries so far were “likely to be the tip of the iceberg” amid “suggestion of fraud on a massive scale.”

The committee concluded that it appeared consumers had been “cynically and systematically duped in pursuit of profit by elements within the food industry.”

“This scandal has also raised broader food policy questions about cheap food production, transparency, consumer confidence and pressures within the supply chain,” it added.

There are suggestions that traditional butcher’s stores have benefited from the furor.

Toby Melville / Reuters

Danny Lidgate hangs meat in the cold store area of Lidgates butchers in London Wednesday, as traditional butchers report a surge in demand from consumers.

Roger Kelsey, of the National Federation of Meat & Food Traders, estimated his members had seen an increase of up to 50 percent in demand for sausages, ground beef and burgers, according to the BBC. The British Retail Consortium, which represents supermarkets, has insisted their sales have not suffered.

Family-run store Aubrey Allen, of Leamington Spa, was named the U.K.’s Butcher’s Shop of the Year 2012 and was recently given a royal warrant to supply meat, poultry and game to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II.

Russell Allen, who was born into the business, said supermarkets would “push and squeeze” and “bully their suppliers” to cut costs.

But he also said ordinary people shared some of the blame for the horse meat scandal by providing the demand for very cheap food.

“If you are buying five burgers for a pound ($1.55), I kind of think you get what you deserve," he said. "It suggests you don’t care, so why would you suddenly care?”

Allen said he thought people should eat better quality meat and have it less often.

He lamented the loss of a culture of cooking. Now, he said, people don't know what to do with cheaper cuts of meat and view him as strange for having homemade soup for lunch.

“Generally people say, ‘I don’t have time to cook’ and I say, ‘Well, you’ve got time to watch people cooking [on television],’” he said.

Allen said butcher’s shops were making something of a comeback after many were put out of business by supermarkets in the 1970s and 1980s.

But he admitted mass-produced food was probably here to stay. “I think it’s possibly a necessary evil on some levels. Not everyone can afford to, not everyone has the luxury of eating quality products all the time,” he said.

'Going on for years'
Frenchman Michel Roux Jr., whose restaurant Le Gavroche is one of Britain’s best, also criticized supermarkets for putting pressure on their suppliers and suggested the horse meat scandal was not a recent occurrence.

“I’m sure that it’s been going on for years, absolutely years,” he said. “It’s being done on a nod and a wink.”

Roux said he remembered as a child eating roast horse and horse burgers. And he suggested a legitimate market for horse meat might be a positive step.

Related: Horse slaughtering legal in US, but public won't bite

“Horse meat is a good meat … maybe in Britain we should embrace it, we should be eating more,” Roux said.

He said the flavor was “not too dissimilar to beef, slightly sweeter and richer,” admitting it wasn’t his favorite.

However, asked if he would put horse meat on his menu, he replied, “Not as yet.”

In Ireland, the officials who uncovered that first horse meat burger and several others with trace amounts can scarcely believe what has transpired since they went public on Jan. 15. 

Ray Ellard, director of The Food Safety Authority of Ireland, said they had been “not expecting to find too much” when they carried out a small survey of beef products.

“We were kind of … I wouldn’t say taken aback, but that’s kind of the truth,” Ellard said. “We were wondering, ‘What’s going on here?’ and wanted to be absolutely sure of the science of what we were doing.”

“We set out to do something fairly simple. We didn’t know it was going to end up where it is,” Ellard added. “It’s been painful for a lot of the food industry, some people have had reputational damage.”

“We’re glad in one way. Systems will all improve and the potential for defrauding people will be a lot less. We’re glad that that’s happened, but we had a nervous few days, I can tell you.”

Reuters contributed to this report.

Related:

European horse meat scandal spreads amid fears harmful drug entered human food chain

'Criminal conspiracy' blamed for European horse-in-burger scandal

Hamburgers pulled from UK supermarket shelves after tests reveal horsemeat

Permits allowing people to drink alcohol then drive should be issued to make it easier for those in isolated, rural areas to visit the pub, according to a motion passed by a local government in Ireland.

Kerry County Council, which governs an area with a population of more than 120,000, is to formally ask the Irish government to allow some drivers to have the equivalent of up to three pints of beer.

The motion -- passed by five votes to three with seven abstentions –-- said this would “greatly benefit people living alone looking at four walls and restore some bit of social activity in local pubs and may also help prevent depression and suicide.”

The idea has been condemned by leading politicians, including Ireland's Transport Minister Leo Varadkar, so it appears unlikely to be adopted. Kerry does not have the power to change the law itself, the country's justice department stressed.

However, Danny Healy-Rae, the councilor behind the motion, was sticking to his guns Thursday.

Healy-Rae, who runs a pub in the village of Kilgarvan, said because people couldn’t drink alcohol in pubs then drive home, they were instead buying it in supermarkets and drinking at home. This could lead to a downward spiral that ended with some taking their own lives, he argued.

“I know of instances where the local garda [police] have to call out to these people to see if they are all right, to see if they are still there,” he said.

'Wouldn't harm or hurt anyone'
Healy-Rae said that under his plan the permits would be issued only to people in isolated rural areas who use narrow country roads where it is difficult to travel faster than 25 or 30 mph. Police would decide who was eligible to drink the equivalent of two or three pints of Guiness and then drive.

“You have to travel the roads and travel the terrain to understand -- honestly what I’m suggesting … it wouldn’t harm or hurt anyone,” he said.

"It would allow these people to meet with their friends and neighbors and to discuss the topics of the day, the price of cattle and whatever,” he said.

The mayor of Kerry, Terry O’Brien, was among the three councilors who voted against the idea.

Asked why, he said “because it’s absolute lunacy to allow anybody behind the wheel of a car with a drink in them.”

“We’ve come a long way from those days,” he added.

O’Brien said wearily he had been “on the phone for the last two days explaining that.”

Varadkar admitted rural isolation was a problem, but added “the solution to it is not to hand out drink-driving permits. Obviously it's something we very much disagree with," according to the Irish Independent newspaper.

"Most of the accidents that are happening are happening in rural areas and on country roads," he added.

The number of people who died on Irish roads is at a record low, with 161 people killed in 2012, down from 186 in 2011.

Varadkar's comments prompted a fighting response from Healy-Rae, who said Varadkar was refusing to help ease the plight of people who were “greatly suffering from rural isolation.”

“He’ll be judged accordingly by those people in the upcoming election,” the councilor said.

“We’ll have to keep the fight on because I’ve got massive support right around the country and from different countries around the world,” he added.

A spat over the flag fluttering over a local government building might sound trivial. But in Northern Ireland, the decision to stop permanently flying the British flag outside Belfast City Hall has sparked some of the worst violence since the 1998 Good Friday peace deal.

Dozens of officers have been injured in attacks on police lines by furious protesters who, night after night, have thrown stones, bottles, fireworks, and, sometimes, Molotov cocktails -- violence that police say is orchestrated by the Ulster Volunteer Force, a pro-British paramilitary group.

Gunshots were heard Saturday, although police said later it appeared that blank rounds had been used. Monday night saw a mix of peaceful protest and riots during which police used water canon and fired plastic bullets, ITV News reported. 

Peter Muhly / AFP - Getty Images

Loyalist protesters confront police as they gather at Belfast City Hall during a city council meeting Monday evening.

According to one pro-British politician, the demonstrators are staging a “revolution with a small r” against attempts by Irish nationalist parties to “remove their Britishness.”

Irish nationalists say they wanted to stop flying the flag from outside city hall because it is also used by pro-British paramilitaries and others to mark out their territory in the divided city and “intimidate” Catholics.

The Good Friday Agreement was credited with largely ending three decades of sectarian violence known as "The Troubles," during which British troops were sent in to patrol the streets and at least 3,600 people were killed.

It created an elected Northern Ireland assembly and devolved government in which power is shared between all sides, with traditional arch-enemies remarkably sitting side by side. The assembly meets in an imposing historic building, Stormont, over which the British flag flies for just 15 pre-agreed days each year. The recent violence was sparked by a vote that agreed a similar policy at local government level in Belfast last month.

Naomi Long, deputy leader of the Alliance Party, warned Northern Ireland was now facing "an incredibly volatile and extremely serious situation."

"I don't think anyone should underestimate the threat it poses to long-term peace and security in Northern Ireland," she told NBC News.

"If people continue with violence, if it continues to escalate, if paramilitary involvement in that violence continues to grow, there's a real risk that we lose the progress we've made," Long said.

Long described the violence as a "reality check." While politics had delivered the peace process, she said, true reconciliation between the divided communities had been "left to one side because it's painful and difficult."

"What we have had is a papering over of the cracks," she said. "We have deep divisions, deep hatred and sectarianism and it won't go away by itself."

Long, a member of the U.K. parliament, said she and other politicians had received death threats after the Alliance Party members on Belfast City Council voted for an attempted compromise deal over the flag on Dec. 3. 

It allowed the British flag to be flown on a number of designated days -- about 17 or 18 depending on the year -- rather than all the time or not at all.

Cops hurt as British unionist protesters try to storm Belfast City Hall in flag spat

An angry mob tried to storm the council chamber on the night of the vote and protests have continued sporadically since, with Monday seeing the fifth straight night of violence as the council met for the first time since last month’s controversial vote.

Police said Monday afternoon in an emailed statement that 96 people had been arrested since the latest unrest broke out and 61 police officers had been injured.

'Attempt to kill': Police in Belfast attacked as flag riots rage on

Billy Hutchinson, leader of the Progressive Unionist Party, which he said provides political advice to the UVF, told NBC News that the flag decision had “driven people mad.”

“I think what this is about is ordinary citizens who feel people are trying to remove their Britishness,” he said.

“You need to remember that this is the United Kingdom and the flag of the country is the union flag,” he added. “It would be a bit like if people wanted to take down the Stars and Stripes from some local government in the U.S.”

Paul Mcerlane / EPA

Local shoppers waiting for a bus watch as riot police follow pro-British protesters away from Belfast's City Hall during a protest Saturday.

State collusion in 1989 murder of Belfast lawyer 'shocking,' British PM says

Hutchinson said this was one of a number of actions by Sinn Fein that were “outside the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement.”

“I think the flag issue is a very big issue, I think it was the straw that broke the camel’s back … the catalyst that brought people onto the streets,” he said.

“I think it is serious, I think people need to recognize this is a revolution with a small ‘r.’ We cannot sustain this sort of inequality coming from Sinn Fein, who are disguising it as equality. They cannot force this through,” he said.

“I think if you listen to what the protesters are doing and saying, I think it is a threat [to the peace process]. It’s not a threat of armed violence… it’s a threat of community and political action,” he added.

Hutchinson stressed he believed in peaceful protest, and would seek to persude any UVF members taking part in violence to stop.

Clinton condemns violence, revisits family legacy in trip to Belfast

Jim McVeigh, leader of Sinn Fein’s councilors on Belfast City Council, said they had thought it would be better to have no national flags at city hall, but had agreed to the compromise deal, which was passed with votes from the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party, and the non-aligned Alliance Party.

“The issue of the flag and allegiance and identity is a very important one here in Belfast. [In the city] you will see flags are used to mark out territory … to intimidate,” he told NBC News, highlighting murals painted on walls and national colors on curbs.

Cathal Mcnaughton / Reuters

A burnt out car blocks Dee Street in east Belfast Sunday near a mural that supports the Ulster Volunteer Force paramilitary group.

McVeigh, who said he has had death threats since the vote, said he had expected some protests after the decision on Dec. 3, but added no one anticipated it would be “as ferocious as it has been.”

“The bottom line is we made the right decision. We’re not going to change that decision. The flag is not going to go back up [permanently]. These protests are futile,” he said.

A spokesman for the police trade union in Northern Ireland, who asked not to be named, told NBC News that the police were “severely stretched” in dealing with the riots and also the threat from dissident Irish nationalist groups.

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Irish Times via Reuters

Savita Halappanavar died of septicaemia a week after miscarrying 17 weeks into her pregnancy.

Laws allowing limited access to abortion will be introduced in Ireland, the only European Union member state that bans the procedure, following the death of a woman who was refused a termination, the government said on Tuesday.

The death last month of 31-year-old Savita Halappanavar, who was denied the abortion of her dying fetus and later died of blood poisoning, shocked the predominantly Roman Catholic country and spurred the government to act on an issue it had delayed for decades.

Abortion was banned in all circumstances by a constitutional amendment in 1983, but when challenged by a 14-year-old rape victim in the so-called "X-case" nine years later, the Supreme Court ruled a termination was permitted when the woman's life was at risk, including from suicide.

Successive governments sidestepped the politically divisive issue of clarifying the circumstances under which the mother's life could be judged to be at risk. Some members of the ruling Fine Gael party have indicated that they may not be able to back the new legislation.

Tragic Savita case reignites abortion debate in Ireland

"The drafting of legislation, supported by regulations, will be within the parameters of Article 40.3.3 of the constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court in the X case," the government said in a statement on Tuesday.

"The legislation should provide the clarity and certainty in relation to the process of deciding when a termination of pregnancy is permissible, that is where there is a real and substantial risk to the life, as opposed to the health, of the woman."

The death of Halapannavar, an Indian living in Ireland, highlighted the lack of clarity in Irish law that leaves doctors in a legally risky position and re-ignited the abortion debate, leading to large protests by both pro-choice and pro-life groups outside parliament and around the country.

The European Court of Human Rights said in 2010 that Ireland must clarify its law, a ruling that led to the commissioning of an experts' report that said a woman was still only lawfully entitled to an abortion when there was a real and substantial risk to her life.

Members of Prime Minister Enda Kenny's conservative Fine Gael party, including minister for European Affairs Lucinda Creighton, have expressed particular misgivings that the inclusion of suicide in any new legislation could lead to abortion on demand.

There was no specific reference to the risk of suicide as grounds for an abortion in the government's statement, which said further decisions would be made at a later stage relating to "policy matters that will inform the drafting of the legislation."

Kenny has said that he expects the government to vote as one on the issue, meaning that any defectors could be expelled from his party.

While this would be unlikely to threaten the government's large majority, it would be a blow after the junior coalition Labour Party, which has campaigned for a clarification of the country's abortion rules, expelled its fifth member in less than two years last week for voting against budget cuts.

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Cathal Mcnaughton / Reuters

A forensic officer works on an unmarked police car in East Belfast Monday, after it was attacked by rioters.

BELFAST -- Police were attacked in Northern Ireland on Monday night by protesters enraged by a decision to remove the British flag from Belfast City Hall, which has sparked eight consecutive days of demonstrations.

About 15 masked men broke out of a crowd assembled in the predominantly Protestant Newtownards Road area of Belfast, smashed the windows of a police car and threw a Molotov cocktail into it while an officer was still inside, police said.

The officer escaped unharmed but the Police Service of Northern Ireland said they were treating the attack as attempted murder.

The attack was one of a series of protests across the city on Monday during which stones and fireworks were hurled at police, who responded with water cannons in at least two locations.

Clinton condemns violence, revisits family legacy in trip to Belfast

Loyalists -- or supporters of Northern Ireland remaining part of the U.K. -- have been protesting against a decision taken mainly by Irish nationalist city councilors from political parties Sinn Fein and the SDLP to take down the British flag which has flown above the provincial capital's city hall every day since it opened in 1906.

Cops hurt as British unionist protesters try to storm Belfast City Hall in flag spat

The decision means Britain's Union Jack will now fly on only 17 days of the year, as is the case at the provincial assembly at Stormont in the British-controlled province.

Teen charged in riots
The Molotov cocktail attack happened outside the constituency office of Naomi Long, a member of the British parliament for the non-sectarian, centrist Alliance Party.

"This was a planned attempt to kill a police officer which also put the lives of the public in danger," Assistant Chief Constable George Hamilton said.

Complete World coverage on NBCNews.com

Long was forced to flee her home last week after receiving threats over her party's support of the removal of the flag from City Hall.

Later on Monday night, police separated rival loyalist and republican crowds rioting in a flashpoint area between the loyalist east Belfast and the small nationalist Short Strand enclave.

Violence has raged for seven of the last eight days since the decision, in Belfast and around the and nearly 30 officers have been injured.

About 10 people have appeared in court charged with offences linked to the rioting - the youngest just 13 years of age.

Decades of violence between the province's mainly Catholic republicans and pro-British Protestants largely ended when a peace agreement was signed in 1998, but much of Belfast remains divided along sectarian lines.

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