A Cork hospital employed a consultant who was convicted of pornography offences in Scotland in October and who did not have proper papers to practise medicine in the Republic.
A special meeting of the board of the South Infirmary/Victoria Hospital will be held next Monday to determine how the consultant radiologist, who was fined £1,500 in a Scottish court in connection with pornography offences, came to be employed at the hospital.
The consultant radiologist, Dr Philip McAndrew (37), came to Cork last weekend and was given a contract by the hospital which had an urgent need to fill a radiologist post because of a vacancy caused by illness.
The consultant had accreditation from the British Medical Council and gave references from colleagues at the Scottish hospital where he had worked.
These were checked by staff at the Cork hospital, but Dr McAndrew was not registered at the Medical Council in Dublin, and it appears the hospital accepted an assurance that his Irish registration was in the post. It is a requirement in the Republic that before a doctor practises in the State he or she must be registered with the Irish council.
The hospital yesterday was reticent on the subject. It issued a short statement saying that, although Dr McAndrew came highly recommended, as soon as his conviction became known to the hospital his resignation was accepted immediately.
Specifically, the consultant was charged with down-loading pornographic images of children from the Internet and storing these on disc. A jail sentence was not handed down and neither was he struck off the British Medical Register, nor considered to be a danger to children.
It is understood Dr McAndrew was preparing to bring his family from Scotland to Cork where he had leased a house, but last night he was not available for comment and appeared to have left the city.
The board's vice-chairman, Senator Denis Cregan, said lessons would have to be learned and would be learned. The sad thing, he added, was that such an excellent hospital which had given tremendous service to the people of Cork for almost two centuries had to look outside the State to fill vacancies urgently. "That makes us vulnerable," he said.
Senator Cregan said the meeting next Monday would be a frank one. Searching questions would be asked. The fact that someone with a criminal conviction had been hired by the hospital would not rest easily with board members or with the consultant staff who had achieved high standards of excellence.
A Medical Council spokesman in Dublin said its role was to maintain records of doctors accredited to it who were practising in the State.