Liam Twomey (Wexford, Fine Gael)

This is fairly straightforward. It raises some of the issues to which I referred regarding a joint council of the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland and the Medical Council. Nothing in the Bill suggests the body that regulates pharmacists must talk to the body that regulates doctors or vice versa. Complaints can be made about either pharmacists or doctors but they are expected to go to their own regulatory body.

Doctors now work closely with pharmacists, and practice nurses are becoming much more important within primary care and take a much greater role. There are also more advanced nurse practitioners as well as physiotherapists, speech and language therapists and occupational therapists, all of whom will be working as teams within the community. However, the regulations for all these practitioners state they must be boxed off and treated separately. If there is a problem with a doctor, it goes to the Medical Council, while a problem with a pharmacist goes to the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland.

We need a mechanism whereby all the regulatory organisations are to some degree compelled to communicate on complaints that have been made. If this mechanism were in place, it might prevent some of the concerns that have been expressed to the Minister. There is a serious need in this regard.

The basis of the Fine Gael-Labour Party proposal for a patient safety authority was the establishment of some form of overarching body. It seems amazing that the accountancy profession has such an overarching body — I think the Minister set it up — whereas patients do not. As we are moving to this point, having to some degree forced the Minister to move to it, it is important we should go the full way and establish a patient safety authority that will compel the regulatory organisations to communicate better with each other.

The amendment specifically states that the doctors' and pharmacists' representative bodies should also see the codes of ethics that have been drawn up for them, which would happen in any case. That input will come, as we have seen with regard to other legislation. However, legislation is needed to begin to force these regulatory bodies to communicate with each other. While I do not suggest they should be compelled to do so, it should be natural that these organisations would talk to each other.

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