I move that the Bill be now read a Second Time. This short Bill will make only a minor change in the law on medical registration, a change recommended to me by the Medical Registration Council.
At present, a medical practitioner is not entitled in this country to full registration until, after completing his academic studies, he has had a year's practical experience in an approved hospital. This year is commonly known as the "intern year". The purpose of this intern year, introduced here by the Medical Practitioners Act of 1951, is to ensure that, in addition to academic knowledge, each medical practitioner will have a certain minimum amount of experience before he goes into general practice, or obtains a post as a fully-fledged practitioner in a hospital.
In the case of a medical practitioner qualifying for the first time in this country, the condition presents no problem. It is accepted as part of the necessary initial training. In the case of a medical practitioner qualified in Britain who, for one reason or another, comes to live in Ireland and transfers from the British to the Irish Register, there is likewise no difficulty. Similarly, a medical practitioner seeking registration here who has already obtained a qualifying diploma in one or other of the territories with which we have reciprocal arrangements for medical registration is exempted by our law from the condition to spend an intern year in an approved hospital if he can show, to the satisfaction of the Medical Registration Council, that after qualifying in his home country he has had comparable experience to that which he would get if he did his intern year here under the approved conditions.
There remains, however, a further small class of medical practitioners who come here from countries with which reciprocal arrangements for medical registration do not exist. Now, such a medical practitioner may be very well qualified, and may have had very extensive practical professional experience in his native land before coming here; yet before he can become registered and obtain the right to practice here, he must, having first obtained an Irish qualifying diploma, then undergo the intern year in the same way as a freshly-qualified young Irish medical graduate. We have had, for instance, the case of a foreign doctor, excellently qualified and with close on twenty years' experience of medical practice, who, on coming here, had to undergo the intern year in the same way as an Irishman who had just passed his final medical examination. I think it will be agreed that this situation is a defect in our system of medical registration.
It is to correct this anomaly that the present Bill has been introduced. It will enable the Medical Registration Council to absolve from the requirement to do an intern year any foreign medical practitioner applying for inclusion in the Irish Register who, having taken an Irish qualifying diploma satisfies the council that his original qualification was sufficient for the efficient practice of medicine and that he has had experience in his own or another country comparable to what he would have got here in the course of the normal intern year. The Bill does nothing to relieve such a practitioner of the need to get an Irish qualifying diploma before he is registered but I understand that concessions in relation to the period of study required for this may be given in such cases by some of the medical school in agreement with the Medical Regitration Council.
I recommend the change to the House.
