Regulated Professions (Health and Social Care) (Amendment) Bill 2019: Report and Final Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2020-09-18
============================================================

Mary Butler (FF), Waterford

I propose to take amendments Nos. 19 to 21, inclusive, and amendments Nos. 31 to 33, inclusive, together.
The Bill as passed by the Dáil amended the Medical Practitioners Act 2007 and the Nurses and Midwives Act 2011 to provide that subcommittees of the preliminary proceedings committee, PPC, and the fitness to practise committee, FTPC, are established pursuant to rules. These subcommittees can perform any of the functions of the respective committee as if they are the committee. This was aimed at better utilising the time of both the PPC and FTPC and facilitating the more expeditious processing of complaints.
The amendments brought forward today provide additional clarity on the procedures for the establishment of these subcommittees. Specifically, they provide that the chairperson or such other committee member as may be designated by rules can establish a subcommittee of the respective committee. As drafted, the provision could be interpreted as meaning the entire committee is required to establish a subcommittee. These amendments remove any risk of ambiguity or uncertainty around the mechanism for establishing subcommittees and I ask Senators to support them.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2020-09-18/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:48:34+00:00
Sitting date: 2020-09-18