A doctor has brought a High Court challenge aimed at halting a fresh inquiry by the Medical Council's Fitness to Practise Committee into alleged misconduct arising from allegations that he sexually assaulted both his son and a woman patient.
The 60-year-old general practitioner is seeking an order to stop the inquiry by the committee, which was due to take place last May.
The inquiry is into separate allegations of sexual assault against his son, who is now 19-years-old, and a woman patient.
The committee held a meeting in June 2006 to consider the allegations but deferred an inquiry while the doctor brought judicial review proceedings which failed in the High Court and failed again, on appeal, to the Supreme Court.
The doctor's lawyers argued that the committee, in deciding in June 2006 that there was a prima facie case for holding an inquiry, had wrongly taken into account an allegation that the doctor had sexually assaulted his son and had carried out examinations of a sexual nature on him between 1991 and 2002.
Allegations had been made as far back as 2003 but the Medical Council did not proceed with an inquiry because of a pending Garda investigation, the court heard. The Garda inquiry related to allegations involving the doctor's son and the DPP had later stated no prosecution was being taken.
Following the unsuccessful court proceedings by the doctor, the committee started a fresh inquiry on May 8th last year but his lawyers objected, arguing that the inquiry was biased.
Yesterday, Patrick Keane SC, counsel for the doctor, said the Supreme Court, while dismissing the judicial review application, had said a malice claim could be raised at any new inquiry. Mr Keane said another issue arose when it was discovered that two members of the new inquiry committee had sat on the original inquiry.
These people could be potential witnesses in the new inquiry and it was totally inappropriate that they should be judges in the matter, counsel said.
The committee comprised a very large number of members and there was no reason why the two people objected to were not substituted, Mr Keane said. The inquiry board comprised just three people.
It would be the equivalent of a judge who was involved in a road traffic accident saying that he would hear the case arising out of it because he had a good recollection of events, Mr Keane said.
Eoin McCullough SC, for the Medical Council, argued the points raised by the doctor were "without merit". The point about the impropriety or otherwise of the people involved in the inquiry had been dealt with in previous court proceedings, counsel argued.
Mr McCullough cited case law that stated litigation should not be dragged on forever to the extent that it becomes oppressive to a defendant.
The doctor should have been prompt in making his objections before the committee sat last May and this was not a prompt application. The doctor was "simply trying to get around the fact that the High Court and Supreme Court had turned him down," he said.
Mr McCullough said the doctor could not claim bias about the make-up of the committee because he knew of its members before he turned up to the inquiry last May. There was "ample evidence" of prima facie misconduct and it was in the public interest that the matter should be brought on, Mr McCullough added.
The case continues before Mr Justice Paul Gilligan.