Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

Yes. We must have a new Bill which will specify the kind of principles needed to guide the establishment of statutory instruments. We cannot give ourselves these broad, extensive powers to establish almost anything by way of a statutory instrument. The law develops and the legal test today is very different from that which obtained 46 years ago.

Senator Frances Fitzgerald made a valid point about disposal and lease. It was the first matter I raised when I saw the word "disposal". The Attorney General's office advises me that in a legal context disposal is to facilitate lease or whatever. None of these lands will be sold. They will all be leased.

Co-location will proceed at eight hospitals. There is no issue with the other six proceeding because either the HSE owns the land or their boards are not established under the 1961 Acts, such as St. James's and Beaumont hospitals' boards are. Those two have been advised that there is no issue. Beaumont Hospital wrote seeking my permission to proceed with co-location. It did not need my permission because this was a policy we had initiated but we believed the hospitals needed permission to lease land which we were going to give them by way of amending the statutory instrument. Given the doubt about everything under the 1961 Act, we could not do that either. We are facilitating this legislation to remove any doubt.

The Medical Council brought to our attention a problem in the Medical Practitioners Act that it is necessary under the Act to have a new register to elect a new council but to have a new register the new council must consult. The council's lawyers identified that loophole and we are availing of this Bill to close that off as quickly as possible. I agree with Senator Twomey that we should put the new regulatory regime in place which facilitates a lay majority. While this is not the be all and the end all, it is an important signal to inspire public confidence and confidence in the profession that we will not self-regulate. This is the first country in the world to do so and two others are following suit since we did it a few months ago. It will facilitate fitness to practise inquiries being held in public in normal circumstances. It will provide competence assurance for which we are providing money.

This is not a question of patients deciding whether someone is a nice or good doctor but a question of peer review. Senator Twomey was perhaps talking about the College of General Practitioners' pilot project. Dr. Neary could have selected a couple of hundred of his patients——