The Minister for Health is to shortly present legislation to the Cabinet regulating the work of medical practitioners.
Mr Martin said that he intended amending the Medical Practitioners Act 1978.
"Some of the main issues which have been considered are: greater public representation on the Medical Council, measures to improve the public accountability and transparency of the council, improved efficiencies in the fitness to practise procedures, and measures to ensure the ongoing competence of all doctors to engage in their profession. An increased public advisory role for the council on its area of expertise is envisaged." The Minister also said that a national working group advising him on future measures for the regulation of complementary therapists was expected to report within the next year.
He was replying to the Labour spokeswoman on health, Ms Liz McManus, who asked what action he was taking arising from public concern regarding persons paying substantial sums of money to a doctor claiming to provide alternative treatment for cancer patients.
The issue was extremely serious, she said, "involving one doctor who has been struck off the Irish register, and another who was struck off the register in America for gross negligence, both of whom appear to have been practising quack medicine, taking large sums of money, between €10,000 and €20,000, from people who are extremely sick and vulnerable."
Mr Martin said he took the recent events particularly seriously and the behaviour that transpired was unacceptable. "The Medical Council took action in respect of one individual. The individual was taken off the register. The council had no authority over the second individual because he was not on the register." Mr Martin cautioned against "offering a panacea and pretending to people that a new medical practitioners Bill would suddenly eliminate this kind of practice and behaviour because it will not." There were limits, he added, to what they could do by regulation.
There was a need to educate the public about the existence of the Medical Council, the idea of a register and so forth, the Minister added.
