Catherine Noone (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I support the call by the Irish Association of Plastic Surgeons for regulation in the area of cosmetic surgery. I find it hard to believe that in this day and age, any doctor is free to carry out certain plastic surgery procedures without having any plastic surgery training. There are dubious practices in the area of dermal fillers about which an independent review was carried out in the UK last month. We need not go into the specifics of it. Suffice it to say that there is a possibility of a scare within the industry similar to that over the recent PIP breast implant scandal. I call on the Minister to legislate in this area so that we have regulation of plastic surgeons, including a specific specialist register of plastic surgeons.

I wish to mention an initiative launched today by the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Deputy Deenihan. We are coming into a period in which we will be commemorating many different events that happened approximately 100 years ago. He has officially launched Century Ireland, a major new online news service which will chart both ground-breaking and everyday news events which took place from the time of the Home Rule debate to the Civil War, from 1913 to 1923. This will go live on rte.ie/centuryireland and RTE has a live Twitter feed to allow people to live in the zone and understand what daily life was like in 1913. I thoroughly recommend that people, including teachers and school students engage with this fascinating and innovative tool. Day by day it will highlight stories relating to things taking place exactly a century ago, be it Home Rule or interesting stories such as a typhoid outbreak or even a suffragette being convicted for defacing a statue of John Redmond. It is a great initiative and I praise RTE, Boston College, the Minister and all involved in bringing it into being.