Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

The heads of the Bill on medical practitioners legislation will be published between Easter and summer so that people can have an input into defining the legislation before it is published in the autumn. That legislation informed our thinking in advance of this report. When a doctor becomes a consultant in Ireland, he or she is placed on a specialist register and stays on it for the rest of his or her career, unless he or she is struck off for fitness to practice reasons. That is not best practice. Doctors must meet certain competence assurance standards. Part of the legislation will make it a statutory requirement to meet competence assurance standards every few years. That can only be done if one is involved in ongoing training and education and if one's performance is audited. That will be a central part of the legislation and is one of the recommendations in the report.

The Medical Council is a statutory body but the profession is self-regulated. I want to see a greater input from lay people into the regulation of medics in this country. At the moment there is a huge majority of doctors on the Medical Council and that needs to change for the good of the profession and to improve public confidence. I have been discussing this with the Medical Council recently.

See this speech in context