Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Before responding to this specific amendment, I thank Deputy Kelly and members from across all of the political groupings in this House for engaging with my Department's officials, and with me in recent days and weeks, on this important issue.

I wish to state at the start, because it will apply to all of the amendments, that I want to engage further with the professional bodies, both the Irish Society of Chartered Physiotherapists, ISCP, and the Irish Association of Physical therapists, IAPT, to make sure that we can tease through issues or concerns that people have. I say that in an effort to be constructive and helpful. This is extraordinarily important legislation that is grounded in protecting the public, in public safety and in empowering members of the public as they go about their business obtaining services from professionals in this State.

I have every confidence in CORU, as the State regulator, and in the Physiotherapists Registration Board in discharging its duties as the regulator. I want us to get this legislation right. We have discussed the issues in recent days and weeks and I think it boils down to a small number of issues. I accept that there are legitimate concerns. The Houses of the Oireachtas is due to go into recess at the end of this week. I suggest that we use the period between now and resuming in September, and before Report Stage of this legislation, to see if we can iron out any issues. There are particular issues about the scope of practice. I mean the fact that we do not define scope of practice in primary legislation. Let us consider whether we can provide further clarity on the matter. There is also the issue of the assessment of professional competence test, what is involved, what is the criteria, where is it set at and can we provide further clarification. All of that is subject to the legal advices that are available to me and through the office of the parliamentary draftspeople. I just wanted to say that at the outset because I think it will come up as I address each amendment.

Deputies Kelly and Howlin tabled amendment No. 2 and Deputies Brassil, Kelleher and Louise O'Reilly tabled amendment No. 3. I hope that the Deputies will accept my good faith that my Department will engage further. I am not in a position to accept these amendments because they would have some unintended consequences. As I understand it, these amendments seek to ensure that the application period for recent Institute of Physical Therapy, IPTAS, graduates is time limited and a date of 30 September 2018 is proposed in one of the amendments. However, section 6(b) of the Bill already provides a stop date of 31 December 2019 for IPTAS graduates. This is to allow current students on the final IPTAS physical therapy programme to graduate by the end of 2019. More importantly, these amendments would result in the unintended consequence of sunsetting the provisions of section 5 in so far as they relate to applicants for registration who have never practised their professions. Perhaps we can further engage on this issue between now and Report Stage.

I thank the Minister for his clarification and also for his openness in regard to the issues. I agree with him that we need a period of time to address these issues and we need to use the summer wisely. I hope the Department of Health and in particular the officials who are accompanying him today will use the summer wisely in trying to deal with these intricate issues. They affect people's professions and we need to be very careful that there are no unintended consequences across the board. We have been down the road on issues similar to this before and there were problems.

On that basis, I will not be pressing the amendment. I do not fully agree with the Minister's response in respect of this specific issue but having said that, I accept his bona fides. It is unfortunate that these issues were not teased out to the level they should have been, which probably goes back to the Minister's predecessor, may I say.