This research has provided deeper insight into perceptions of and experiences with specialist palliative care services and palliative care in Ireland, an area where limited factual evidence exists. While all participants broadly understood the principles of palliative care, there were key areas related to service provision where misperceptions persisted despite having personal experience. These included the belief that palliative care is only for people near the end of life, that it is only delivered by specialist teams and is usually only available to people with cancer. A significant proportion of participants also held similar incorrect assumptions about the provision of SPC services, predominately that they were only accessible to people with cancer or those near the end of life. Also, this study found there were significant differences in preferences around decision making, receiving informal care and place of care that appear to have been driven to a large extent by age. These are important findings because poor patient knowledge may hinder development of informed preferences about acceptable trajectories of care. Overall, this study shows that people living with a life-limiting illness place significant value on barrier-free access to information and advice. It was particularly important to patients and caregivers to know whom to contact if they had a query. Interestingly, the healthcare professional didn’t always need to have the answers to their query. Simply having barrier-free access to healthcare professionals alleviated patients’ and caregivers’ concerns of ‘feeling lost in the system’. The results indicate that patients prioritised ease and efficiency of access to services and support over other attributes presented in the DCE, including improvements in physical health.