James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am proposing that section 8 be deleted. Section 8 provides for an offence of making a false declaration or representation in obtaining registration for a professional calling. An extensive review of the regulated professions in the State was undertaken by my officials and it became apparent that those professions which maintain a statutory register for entry to the profession already provided a carefully calibrated set of penalties or sanctions for this type of offence, together with appropriate practical consequences that flow from such behaviour or conduct in falsely obtaining registration for the particular profession.

These existing penalties and sanctions in separate specific statutes are carefully tailored to the profession at hand and carry various forms of consequences which, in many cases, are quite sophisticated, ranging from removal from the register, for example, to several years imprisonment. Replacing all these with a simple perjury-related offence in this Bill would cause difficulties. It would hamper the ability of the responsible bodies to deal with attempts at false registrations in a tailored way, depending on the nature of the profession and its registration requirements. I consider it more appropriate that the existing relevant statutes and legal architecture across a range of health, social care and other specific roles requiring statutory registration in the State continue to provide for and deal with the matter of sanctioning the obtaining of false registration in such roles rather than doing so at a general level in the Bill, which would unnecessarily undermine the tailored approach that is already available to deal with this type of offence. In short, this is dealt with by each of the relevant professions within its legislation and registration rules. It would be unnecessary to try to duplicate that here in a more simplified manner.