More than 30 types of professionals, from architects to vets, will be regulated and disciplined more tightly in a bid to raise standards and public confidence in the State's professions thanks to new laws that have either been passed or are in the pipeline, a recent conference heard.

Teachers, vets, health professionals and the Garda Síochána have all been subject to new legislation in the past five years, while others, including architects, surveyors, the media, auctioneers, doctors and pharmacists, will face more legislation over the next 18 months.

Five professional and regulatory bodies spoke about how the new laws would affect members of the public at a conference entitled Regulating the Professions in Ireland, organised by solicitors McDowell Purcell Partnership in Dublin last Friday.

The 25-person law firm has been at the forefront of professional regulatory law for over 30 years, and has acted for professional bodies and defended professionals in more than 400 conduct inquiries over that period.

The conference aimed to highlight the disciplinary codes and procedures in the Law Society, the Royal Institute of Architects, the Teachers Council, the Veterinary Council and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland.

It emerged that the most important issues for these bodies are the necessity to protect the public interest while ensuring fairness in proceedings; the difficulties involved in drawing up codes of professional conduct and regulation for professions; the role of mediation in resolving complaints; methods of separating representative and regulatory roles of organisations; and the need for clarity in relation to these roles.

"Customers are entitled to expect a high and consistent level of service from the professions and those providing services are entitled to expect to compete on a level playing field," Minister for Justice Michael McDowell said when he opened the conference. The best way to achieve this was to maintain a balanced approach to regulation of the professions, the Tánaiste said.

He warned against using the courts to settle all disciplinary actions against professionals, saying that the "judicialising" of these procedures could make the regulation of professional bodies unworkable.

However, Mr McDowell added that while many professions had well-established, self-regulation mechanisms, independent statutory regulation of the professions was necessary. It would ensure not only that a sector's complaints mechanism was above suspicion, but that it was believed to be so by the public.

He said this was particularly true in relation to the legal profession.

John Elliot, registrar of the Law Society, said he believed the involvement of the High Court in the disciplinary procedures of the solicitors' profession worked well. "Solicitors are officers of the court, and it is, therefore, appropriate to have the judiciary involved in the disciplinary process. This may not apply to other professions, however."

The law profession "should be expected to keep its own house in order and should not be absolved by the State of this responsibility," he added.

"Of course, there should be public oversight, and accountability is very important. But there is a great strength in having the involvement of practitioners in regulation. At the Law Society, we take care to ensure the separation of our regulatory and representative functions."

Heather Briers, director of professional standards at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland (ICAI), said accountants would also face major changes in how they were regulated.

The ICAI is setting up the Chartered Accountants Regulatory Board, which will be independent of the institute's council, separating the ICAI's representative and regulatory functions.

The new board's role will be to discipline members, member firms, affiliates and students, as well as monitoring how they comply with standards of professional conduct.