Holly Cairns
Question:427. Deputy Holly Cairns asked the Minister for Health the steps he is taking to ensure that Ukrainian medical professionals can register to practise in Ireland. [19159/22]
View answerThursday, 7 April 2022
Questions (427)
Written answers
As the Deputy will be aware, the Medical Council is the statutory agency responsible for the registration and regulation of doctors in Ireland. In order to protect patients, it has a responsibility to ensure that all doctors registered to practise medicine in Ireland meet the requirements to practise as set out in its legislation. Officials from my Department have been working closely with the Council in recent weeks to examine the ways in which support can be provided to doctors arriving from Ukraine and the Council has established an internal working group to explore and address the issues that arise.
Depending on where a doctor qualified and the type of qualifications they hold, some doctors arriving into Ireland from outside the EU may be required to take a pre-registration exam and an English language exam. These exams look at a number of areas including communication and clinical skills and are an important step to ensure patient safety. The HSE in partnership with various stakeholders are also looking at other options which these doctors can avail of while registration is pending, such as medical translation and access to CPD resources. To date the Council has not received a full application for registration from any of the new doctors arriving in Ireland, however it is directly supporting a number of doctors with queries about the registration process and the requirements.
The Council is working directly with key stakeholders in the HSE, Postgraduate Training Bodies and the Irish Medical Schools Council. Discussions with these partners are ongoing and it is hoped to have a further update in the near future. The President and the CEO of the Medical Council also met with Ambassador Larysa Gerasko and the Ambassador has offered the support of the Embassy in acting as a liaison with Ukrainian authorities to support the registration of Ukrainian doctors in Ireland and also to assist the Council in disseminating information to Ukrainian doctors in Ireland.