Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am not looking for further clarity. I am looking for a better answer. I accept the Minister of State's point. It is a semantic point and I know the Minister of State is not trying to play with words. When I say "minor sanction" I am talking about a minor finding, because there can be a finding where the Medical Council of Ireland says a person has committed gross misconduct and has been negligent to the point that he or she is believed to have endangered the lives of his or her patients. That is the kind of finding one might take to the High Court. Every single finding below that may not have had due attention paid to it for a particular period. This person may have failed to follow a World Health Organization, WHO, protocol before going into an operating theatre, that had no effect on a patient although they should have followed the protocol. There are myriad such scenarios and some are fairly minor findings. The other thing this legislation does is state that every single finding against a healthcare professional will have to be made public. This is serious because for anyone running a practice, people will be able to look up findings made against them. That transparency is welcome but it puts an awful lot of weight on the findings; when a member of the public is looking at a dentist, a doctor or whatever service, they may just see that a person has had two or three findings made against him or her by the Medical Council of Ireland and decide not to go near him or her, whereas in fact those findings may be pretty minor.

This is very serious for the medical professional. It is very serious for a GP, for example. The Minister of State said in his response that the medical practitioner can go to any court. He or she cannot; he or she can go to the High Court. That is the point of this. The only place he or she can go under section 15 of the Bill is the Court of Appeal or the High Court. That is it. I am not looking for a briefing to get clarity on why that is the case. I do not accept the argument that this is the existing judicial norm. The existing norm is that we have four or five layers of courts, depending on where the Court of Appeal is put. Broadly, the severity of the situation warrants a higher court. That is not the case here, however. There is only one court and it is the second highest court in the land, which is not accessible to most people. I am not looking for more clarity. I am asking why other solutions were not looked at, such as an independent appeal board linked to the Medical Council of Ireland. How about a non-judicial appeal first? That could have been looked at and I do not see why that could not happen. I am sure there are myriad other non-judicial or quasi-judicial solutions that could have been looked at. Perhaps if the Medical Council of Ireland finds against someone and there is a professional non-judicial appeal board that also upholds the Medical Council of Ireland's finding, then the Circuit Court and the District Court simply are not equipped to deal with findings against a person's name and there is simply no choice. This is binary. The Medical Council of Ireland finds that one did not follow the correct WHO protocols, and while no patients were put at risk, protocols should have been followed. The only option is to go to the High Court in that instance. I am not asking for clarity on the decision made. I do not wish to speak for anyone else on the committee but this does not feel appropriate.

Will the Minister of State undertake to find a better solution between now and Report Stage? That is the briefing I would like rather than having this explained in more detail.