Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This Bill makes a number of housekeeping amendments to previous legislation, with the general intent of ensuring medical organisations run as well as they ought to. Key to this is the amendment of the 2005 Act by changing the current provisions regarding professional membership of the Health and Social Care Professionals Council and to make other technical amendments. In 2005, the Department of Health introduced a system of statutory registration for health and social care professionals. This system ensures members of the public are protected and informed in order that they can be confident that the professional providing the service is properly qualified, competent and of good standing. It also ensures professional conduct and the promotion of high standards of professional education and training among health and social care professionals. The system of statutory registration currently applies to the 12 health and social care professions, regardless of whether they work in the public or private sector or are self-employed.

This Bill, which introduces amendments to the Health and Social Care Professionals Act 2005, is necessary to facilitate the effective functioning of the council and the registration boards for those individual professions. The principal amendments relate to the appointment of professional nominees to council; changes in registration criteria, including the power to allow registration boards to put in place a scheme for returners to practice and setting criteria for qualifying as an existing practitioner; and further implementing the EU directive for recognition of professional qualifications. This EU directive is wide ranging, covering workers from architects to nurses, but it has a significant impact on the health service and its revision will need to be monitored closely by all employers in the health service.

There is no doubt it will be beneficial to the HSE, with overseas EU workers comprising a significant numbers on the medical register. We have seen the mistakes of the past. The well-being of patients and the quality of health services must be a top priority for member states so specific rules need to apply to health care staff covered by the EU directive.

There has been plenty of talk about the movement of foreign health workers in recent years, particularly in the wake of high-profile cases that have raised concerns about the clinical competence and, in many cases, language skills of some migrants and the methods of assessment by regulators and employers. Against this backdrop, the European Commission has, over the past year, been consulting on changes to the directive on the recognition of professional qualifications. Under the current terms of the directive, health care professions who hold certain qualifications awarded in one member state can register to practise in any other EU member state without having to satisfy further tests or formalities under the directive's automatic recognition procedures.

Automatic recognition of qualifications grants access to professional registration, but it does not determine an individual's suitability to do the job. Importantly, professional registration does not remove any responsibility from the employer to ensure the applicant is competent to perform the role for which he or she is applying. This is why a number of tighter rules are needed to ensure all health professionals coming to work in Ireland are fit to practise.

One important amendment to the directive concerns an alert mechanism between professional regulators that would place an obligation on each regulator to warn other member states of professionals who have been struck off. I would be particularly in favour of such a change being introduced to help prevent dangerous or incompetent practitioners shopping around for jobs in Europe. I would also like to be sure that the legislation ensures registrants to be required to demonstrate continuing professional development in order to maintain registration in their home countries. Many European regulators have no such requirements.

Language is an issue that has been a source of much controversy in the public arena, and welcome change is planned in this area. The new proposal makes it clear that regulators will be able to ask applicants for registration for evidence of language competence.

Another proposal from the Commission concerns the introduction of a portable, Europe-wide electronically transmittable professional card certifying a person's qualifications and professional status. Whatever system of exchange is used, its success will depend upon the quality and trustworthiness of the information it contains.

While the Commission's proposals suggest the sending country will create and validate the card, it is the receiving country whose nationals are potentially at risk of harm so responsibility for checking credentials should remain with it. There is no doubt in my mind that the safety of patients must always come first, and a worker's right to mobility should never be at the expense of safety and quality. Given the mistakes of the past, we have argued for higher standards to be applied to health care professions as the risks are so much higher and patients are vulnerable. Now is the time to act.

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