John Crown (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 6:

In page 30, between lines 13 and 14, to insert the following:“41. Section 32 of the Principal Act is amended by the substitution of the following for subsections (6) and (7):

“(6) If any member of the Council is of the opinion that a registration board has submitted to the Council a draft bye-law that may be likely to result in competition being prevented, restricted or distorted, and if this draft bye-law has not been supplied to the Council with a copy of the Competition Authority’s written opinion as to whether the draft bye-law is likely to result in competition being prevented, restricted or distorted, the Council shall—

(a) submit the draft bye-law to the Competition Authority and seek its opinion as to whether any provision of the draft bye-law would, if the bye-law were made, be likely to result in competition being prevented, restricted or distorted, and
(b) not approve the draft bye-law until after the Council has received a written opinion from the Competition Authority.

(7) A registration board shall ensure that as soon as practicable after a bye-law of the board is made it—

(a) is published in such manner as the board may determine, and
(b) is submitted to the Minister for laying before each House of the Oireachtas.

(8) Subsections (4) to (6) of section 95 apply with the necessary modifications to bye-laws submitted to the Minister in accordance with this section as if they were regulations made by the Minister.”.”.

I will be very brief.

The charge has often been laid at the door of professional regulatory bodies that they have tended to operate closed shops. Such a charge has frequently been laid at the door of the medical professions, but in truth, the biggest impediment to jobs in medicine in Ireland is not the professional bodies but the agencies that create the jobs. It struck me that the discussion of this amendment provides a good opportunity to make sure this issue is dealt with authoritatively. The regulatory bodies have a unique role in that they straddle a number of different areas of responsibility in terms of recognising who can practice a profession and determining how they should practice it. As such, this is something that is deserving of some degree of oversight to make sure that there is no self-serving behaviour across the range of specialties and in medicine too, which is not part of this particular Bill. We should ensure that measures are not introduced that are restrictive in terms of the recognition of training qualifications, experience, grandfathering clauses and so forth, which would have the effect of creating closed shops. This, in turn, would have the effect of driving up prices, decreasing services and restricting access for bright young people who want to join the professions, and would ultimately work to the detriment of patients and clients.