Seanad debates
Friday, 21 March 2003
Order of Business.
In regard to the issue raised by Senators Coghlan and O'Toole, can we have a debate soon on self-regulation by the professions? While I have no problem with the Competition Authority's report in so far as it applies to university or third level places for training people in the professions, the real bottle-necks occur subsequent to that in the de facto quantitative restrictions which the legal, accountancy and medical professions impose on the numbers who can work. It is not only a question of educating more engineers, doctors or people to do law degrees but of the stranglehold which this concept of self-regulation holds over the way the professions operate.
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