This morning former UCD lecturer Marie Fleming will learn the outcome of her landmark High Court challenge to the law banning assisted suicide.

The 58-year-old, who is paralyzed and in the final stages of multiple sclerosis, wants to die in the arms of her partner Tom Curran at their home in Arklow, Co. Wicklow.

However the gandmother and mother-of-two fears he may be prosecuted and jailed for up to 14 years if he is found to have assisted her death.

While acknowledging the State's right to prevent assisted suicide, it is her case that there should be an exception to the ban for mentally competent, incurably ill people who wish to end their lives.

She wants the High Court to strike down Section 2.2 of the Criminal Law (Suicide) Act 1993 as unconstitutional.

Claim of discrimination under law

Her lawyers argued at last month's hearing that the law breaches Marie Fleming's personal rights under the Constitution and European Convention on Human Rights.

It was also claimed that the legislation discriminates against those who are physically incapable of taking their own lives.

Alternatively she has sought an order directing the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to give guidelines setting out what factors are considered in reaching a decision to prosecute a person who has helped another to die.

In response lawyers for the State argued before the court that suicide is not a right and submitted that the current ban on assisted suicide is justified to protect vulnerable people - like the elderly and infirm - from involuntary death.

A ruling by the Divisional High Court composed of President Nicholas Kearns, Mr. Justice Paul Carney and Mr. Justice Gerard Hogan is due at 11am.