Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 13 June 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

General Scheme of the Patient Safety (Licensing) Bill: Discussion

9:00 am

Dr. Tony Holohan:

If I may come to the Chair's question first on radiology. That is a good example. If we had this licensing arrangement in place it is the kind of mechanism we might be using in the context of the issue to do with the basic safety standards because we could identify the use of ionising radiation as a designated activity and therefore the subject of a requirement for a licence and so on if we had that arrangement in place. In time, when we come to designate that list I expect to see ionising radiation, the use of general anesthesia and other such criteria on that list. We have not developed all of the criteria as yet, but it will essentially be that set of high risk activities which represent potential risks to individuals if things go wrong in the context of an individual case. There is work done in other jurisdictions that are a little ahead of us in terms of some of this. The UK in particular has very detailed regulations on the identified designated activities that it schedules as part of its requirements. That is what we will be looking at to give us guidance on all of this.

Dr. MacLellan might come back to Head 20 in relation to Deputy Louise O'Reilly's question or did I overlook the Chair's first question?