Robbie Gallagher (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. Fianna Fáil will support the Bill. It seeks to offer patients reassurance by allowing public access to all sanctions handed down to medical practitioners. This is to ensure the public has access to information about disciplinary sanctions that have been imposed on doctors, nurses, midwives, pharmacists and other regulated health professionals. The Bill will also give health professionals the right to appeal minor sanctions. The measures to speed up processes to recruit consultants are also welcome, but the main barrier to tackling the 479 consultant vacancies is the discriminatory pay practices against post-2012 recruits.

The Bill amends the five health professional regulatory Acts, particularly with regard to fitness to practise and registration. At the most basic level, the Bill will ensure clinicians will inform patients of previous professional issues, which is to be welcomed. It will ensure that doctors, nurses, midwives, pharmacists and other health professionals will, by law, have to supply details of sanctions imposed on them. It also means that any allegation of wrongdoing in another country can be used as evidence in fitness to practise proceedings in Ireland. Crucially, patients will have more access to information on the people treating them as all the details will be made public. Patients will also be able to look up the history of their treating clinician, which is very welcome.

There has always been an imbalance of power in Ireland, and elsewhere, between doctors and patients. Sick patients are vulnerable and worried. They attend medical professionals whom they hope have all the information and knowledge. It is a completely unequal relationship. In some cases, the doctors involved have been struck off in other jurisdictions and should never have been practising in this country. In other cases, the doctors involved had numerous complaints made against them over many years. This tiny number of people were going about their business destroying people's lives.These people found out afterwards that there had been complaints against these doctors for decades but nobody ever knew and they had no way of finding out. We cannot be sure that, if people knew in advance, they might not have gone near those doctors in the first place and the doctors would have been removed. Thankfully, this is only about a tiny number of people but a tiny number of people can cause extraordinary pain.

Nonetheless, I am glad the Bill provides for clinicians to appeal against minor sanctions and this aspect can be further improved. My understanding is that they must go to the High Court, which is a pretty high bar for anyone and will include God knows what legal expense along the way. Is it possible to find a way for such appeals to happen with a lower bar than the High Court, although still with the highest level of scrutiny? I believe the High Court is too burdensome. Let us do that but let us also find a way to ensure the money and scarce resources that should be spent on healthcare is not flittered away on the legal profession. It is critical that scarce resources are spent where they should be spent, which is on the patients, as I am sure the Minister of State will agree.