A row between the Medical Council and the South-Eastern Health Board over a psychiatrist who practised here while suspended in Britain has intensified.
The board's chief executive, Mr John Cooney, said that the council should "get its act together". He accused it of trying to shift the blame for the employment of Dr John Harding-Price to the board. Dr Harding-Price worked as a locum last year at two of the board's psychiatric hospitals while under investigation in Britain for professional misconduct. He was suspended at the time and was subsequently struck off the medical register.
Mr Cooney said that the board received a "multiplicity of confirmations" from the Medical Council that the psychiatrist was registered in Ireland, but it was not told he was "under a cloud" in Britain.
The council's president, Prof Gerard Bury, said he did not wish to "get into a contest with any individual", but he had to reassure the public that the council was doing its job "effectively".
The row centres on two certificates confirming Dr Harding-Price's registration and four phone calls which the board says it made to the council between August 2000 and last January, in which it was also confirmed that the doctor was on the register.
There is no dispute about the first document, an annual certificate of registration, covering the 12 months from July 1st 1999, which Dr Harding-Price supplied to the board with his application. At the time it was issued he was also clear to work in Britain.
The second certificate, confirming his registration in Ireland, is dated April 13th 2000. This date is significant because it is three days after the council was informed by the General Medical Council in Britain that the doctor had been suspended there, and four days before he began working at St Luke's Hospital, Clonmel. This sequence had given rise to the impression that the council issued a certificate to the board within days of being informed that Dr Harding-Price had been suspended in Britain. It emerged last night that this is not the case.
Prof Bury said that, having been informed by the GMC of the doctor's suspension, the council set in motion a procedure leading to a High Court action seeking an order suspending him from the register. The certificate of April 13th had been created for the purpose of demonstrating that he was a registered practitioner.
No third party, he said, could have obtained the certificate until the book of evidence was completed the following August. It was clear, he added, from the copy of the certificate now in the possession of the health board, that it came from this book of evidence.
A spokeswoman for the board said it had never been claimed that the certificate was received in April, when Dr Harding-Price was employed. The "bottom line" was that the board had received confirmation of the doctor's registration through both certificates and by way of the phone calls in August and October 2000 and two more calls in January 2001.
Prof Bury, who said on Tuesday that the first contact from the board about Dr Harding-Price was in January 2001, did not dispute that phone calls had been made by board officials confirming his registration in August and October.
Mr Cooney said that the real issue was that the council did not tell the board of Dr Harding-Price's suspension in Britain when it became aware in July 2001 that he was working in Ireland.
Prof Bury said that the council was precluded from doing this because it was refused permission to do so by the High Court.
After court actions in which he was removed from the register and restored, Dr Harding-Price's name was removed again on Wednesday by the High Court, pending an investigation by the council's fitness to practise committee.
