asked the Minister for Health if he will introduce amending regulations to ensure that so called medical faith healers who charge a fee for service are obliged to state to all patients their qualifications and prospects of effecting a cure.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Medical Faith Healers.
5.
There is no provision in existing law that would enable me, as Minister for Health, to make regulations of the kind suggested.
Has the Minister any particular view to express on such practice?
No, I think that on the whole I could leave it to the medical profession. If they felt there were any grave abuses or that damage of a notable order was done to people by people who practice health cures without being registered, I think I would very quickly hear about it. I have no such evidence.
The Minister will agree that those faith healers belong to various churches too?
Yes, some faith healers belong to churches and there is fairly widespread evidence that the psychosomatic element in medicine can enable people to receive benefit from prayer and from invocation. The extent to which they can is not known and has never been examined. That is a fact.
Would the Minister not agree that some of the psychosomatic benefits which some people receive from some of the invocations, more particularly treble visits and so on, assuming that the faith healer does not get flu in the meantime, are quite questionable, as are some of the practices, fairly widespread, mass gatherings and so on, and I specifically exclude those of a spiritual nature?
They may be so but I have no comment to make on them because I have never had a detailed examination of their effects.