The Government has approved the General Scheme of a Bill intended to provide for the regulation of continuing professional development (CPD) for dentists in Ireland.
The proposed legislation was brought by the Minister for Health and will impose obligations on dentists in relation to ongoing training and regulation of providers and new powers for the Dental Council to take action against members of the profession who do not meet the requirements.
The Department of Health said a majority of dentists participate in CPD programmes but that this was primarily driven by their sense of professionalism.
Dentistry was said to be an outlier among the medical professions in that its system of CPD was not subject to statutory regulation and the intention of the proposed changes to the 1985 Act, the department said, is to bring it into line with the others.
RM Block
Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill said the health service “depends on professionals who ... work to the highest standards of their profession”.
She added: “The introduction of this statutory basis for continuing professional development for dentists ... reflects international best practice for their patients.”
The council had previously called on the Government to update the legislation and put CPD programmes on a statutory footing.
In March, the organisation wrote a letter to chairman of the joint Oireachtas committee on health Pádraig Rice, in which it said that failure to regulate dentistry practices and the failure to oblige dentists to “maintain their competence on an ongoing basis in line with a statutory scheme,” represented “a significant risk to public safety”. It suggested there was “unanimity among the dental community that a statutory competence scheme is required”.
