Ms Olivia O'Leary Veal:

There are stringent procedures under Statutory Instrument 125/2000. There are many obligations on the licence holder to come to a standard that is accepted across all professions. The Environmental Protection Agency is the regulatory body and considered the competent authority in the area. There must be justification for the application for the licence initially and then one must satisfy the criteria yearly to satisfy an inspection report. Many of the chiropractic facilities within the State have been regularly inspected by the Environmental Protection Agency, and in this sense there is quite inherent regulation within the processes. One will not be passed for re-license throughout the following year if one does not submit one's reports under the radiation protection adviser that is there. There are therefore many checks within the processes in Ireland already. However, the status is not as we would like it to be. We do operate in rather a grey area, but at that we are doing our best to comply with the regulations and what is being demanded of us as a profession under the system under which we exist.