Seanad debates
Thursday, 25 November 2004
Health and Social Care Professionals Bill 2004: Committee Stage (Resumed).
2:00 pm
Tim O'Malley (Limerick East, Progressive Democrats)
The composition of committees of inquiry is critical to the credibility, transparency and accountability of the proposed regulatory system. The committees must have the expertise, capacity and commitment to effectively discharge the key responsibilities assigned to them in the Bill. They must also strike a balance between the requirement to ensure that the professional and clinical dimensions of any investigation are fully understood and the need to focus on the patient or client perspective. In assessing what this balance might be, a particular consideration must be that the work of a committee of inquiry, by its nature, will be a review of the professional or clinical conduct of a practitioner. Where non-registrants were in a majority in this process, particularly where the committee of inquiry had a small membership, this could contribute to a situation where the work of a committee might not be carried out in an efficient, effective and timely manner.
Notwithstanding the particular background in expertise of the lay membership, there is scope for the inquiry to be delayed by excessive consideration of technical and professional matters. The Bill does not lay down any strict quantitative restrictions on committees of inquiry. In some cases, a committee of three may suffice. In other circumstances there may be good grounds for a substantially larger committee of inquiry.
It is appropriate that the council should have the power to exercise discretion in this regard. I accept the principle underlying the Senators' amendments, which is that the public interest should be specifically identified as a distinct constituent of a committee of inquiry. I propose, therefore, to table an amendment on Report Stage proposing that the council should have regard to the requirement for appropriate representation of the public interest when establishing a disciplinary committee.
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