THE Medical Council today begins an inquiry into complaints of professional misconduct against Dr Moira Woods, the Dublin doctor and campaigner on social issues.
Today's hearing is likely to be taken up with an application by the complainants that the inquiry be held in public.
It is thought likely that it will then be adjourned until early next year.
The inquiry will hear allegations from parents in five families who claim they were wrongly accused of child abuse in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
As the first director of the Sexual Assault Unit of the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin, Dr Woods was involved in providing evidence to support allegations of abuse at the time.
The parents include a couple whose children were returned to them by the courts.
Dr Woods has said she is confident the complaints will not be upheld.
"I deny all charges of professional misconduct and have been advised that the charges are unlikely to be upheld," Dr Woods said when the inquiry was announced.
The complainants are today expected to cite a French case in which a doctor won the right to a public hearing. On this basis they will seek to have the Woods inquiry heard in public. It is understood that the Medical Council now offers doctors the option of a public hearing because of the French case, but no doctor has taken up the offer.
As complaints from five families are involved, the proceedings could take a long time. Some complainants have suggested that it could last for more than six months.
Sources suggest that the families will seek to call health board witnesses who were involved with their cases. While Dr Woods provided diagnoses, the decision on whether to take children into care was one for the relevant health boards.
Families have retained their own legal teams and have arranged for at least one expert witness from Britain to appear on their behalf.
Dr Woods was involved in validating many cases of child abuse and did much - along with the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre - to bring the problem to public attention in the 1980s, when awareness of it was beginning to grow in this country.
She had previously done much to raise awareness of the plight of rape victims.
Alleged child abuse victims are now examined at specialist units in Temple Street and Crumlin Hospitals in Dublin and at St Finbarr's Hospital in Cork.