Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 25 September 2019

Select Committee on Health

Regulated Professions (Health and Social Care) (Amendment) Bill 2019: Committee Stage

Photo of Stephen DonnellyStephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This raises the issue of non-specialists being accepted onto specialist registers. It is referred to in several times in the Bill, including in section 86, and I will address the totality of the issue. There is a serious issue in this county with non-specialists working in specialist posts. In layperson's language, non-consultants are working as consultants. In some cases, they do not have the requisite qualifications and training, and patients have absolutely no idea that the person they are seeing is not a consultant. We have discussed this issue before in the committee. My fear is that if it is found in the future that there was negligence by any of these people, there could be serious consequences for patients, in the first instance, and for the State. Anybody who is going in to see a consultant, having waited two or three years for an appointment, needs to know whether that person is, in fact, a consultant.

This issue has been raised several times since I became a member of the committee and the numbers are increasing. I have submitted various parliamentary questions on the matter and, if I recall correctly, the latest figure was 168 non-consultants in consultant posts. I am concerned that this Bill provides more ways for doctors who are not qualified specialists to be put on the specialist registers. Rather than coming back to the issue as we discuss each relevant section, will the Minister of State agree to discuss it in totality at this point? It may be the case that this provision has been carefully thought through. He referred to a two-year timeframe in this instance, while another section refers to a one-year timeframe for a different group of doctors. Will he outline precisely which types of doctors who are not specialists could end up on a specialist register?

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