Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Shortall for her amendment. We had a very useful discussion on this on Committee Stage, and I committed to looking at whether we would bring forward an amendment to do what the Deputy is looking for after six months. As I said on Committee Stage, I agree that it is a useful amendment. It would be a good forcing mechanism. There have been too many delays over too many years. As has been acknowledged, the amendment I am tabling is essentially a legislatively proofed version of Deputy Shortall's amendment.

To Deputy Shortall's question about timing, I intend to commence this pretty much straight away, so the timing will be the same. At the request of my Department, the Health Research Board, HRB, has examined the approaches taken to regulation of health and social care professionals internationally. That report is now available on the Department's website. That is an important first step. We need to understand how other countries do this because, clearly, some of them are doing it better than we are. That is now done. I draw the Deputies' attention to a relatively new test required of us under EU law, that is, the EU proportionality test directive. It will have some quite big implications for regulating in this area for years to come. Officials in my Department are drawing from the report compiled by the HRB into what is happening internationally. We will have to pay attention in that regard. I will come back to this when we discuss continuing professional development for dentists and the regulation of dentists. It adds extra steps that are now required by the EU in this regard. It is a new development and we will come back to it. It will have some significant impacts on how we go about this from here on. There have been delays in the development of the policy framework, and I agree wholeheartedly with that. I want to make it clear, though - and this is really important - that the absence of statutory regulation is not a barrier to employment, be it in a private provider or in the HSE.

We had a very useful discussion on Committee Stage about quite a broad range of health and social care professionals. Deputy Shortall has referred to two of them again. There is no reason they cannot be hired now. The HSE may have chosen not to hire those to whom the Deputy referred.

See this speech in context