Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As the Minister of State noted, this issue arises out of the Corbally judgment. I do not accept, as he has suggested, that the judgment is incorporated into this legislation. The court unanimously dismissed the Medical Council's appeal against the High Court's quashing of a council decision that Professor Corbally should receive an admonishment for a once-off error. The court found that the a threshold of seriousness, which is what I am seeking to introduce in this amendment, must be met. It further found that it was neither fair nor just that somebody like Professor Corbally should be subject to a public inquiry with the attendant extensive publicity, some of which lacked fairness and moderation. The purpose of our amendment is to incorporate that ruling into the Bill, but I would be happy to support a similar Government amendment. Our objective is to legislate across all the primary Acts to incorporate the Corbally judgment into the definitions of poor professional performance.

This issue has been raised with me by a number of people and I am sure it has been raised with other members of the committee.