ONLY some doctors are to face public hearings into complaints against them, in spite of the Medical Council's decision to hear the Dr Moira Woods case in public.
The council's Fitness To Practise Committee meets today to establish a timetable for the Woods hearings. It will also consider media access to the hearings. An earlier decision to limit access to two journalists has drawn protests from media organisations and the National Union of Journalists (NUJ).
Early last month, the committee announced it would hold public hearings into complaints by parents who say they were wrongly accused of child sex abuse in the late 1980s. As the first director of the Sexual Assault Unit of the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin, Dr Woods was involved in providing evidence to support allegations of abuse at the time. She has denied all charges of professional misconduct.
The Woods hearings will be the first to be held in public.
Prof Patricia Casey, the committee's chairwoman, said whether future cases would be heard in public would depend on applications being made by the doctor or by a complainant. The committee would consider any application for a public hearing.
Today's meeting will try to resolve the issue of media access to hearings. Media organisations and the NUJ have told the committee that its plan to allow only two journalists to attend the hearings is unworkable.
The Irish NUJ secretary, Mr Eoin Ronayne, has called on editorial managements to boycott the hearings unless full access is granted to the media.
The Medical Council's registrar, Mr Brian Lea, has asked media organisations to send nominated journalists to today's hearing. The committee will then decide whether they will all be allowed to report its proceedings or whether it will stand by its earlier decision to give access only to two journalists.
Mr Ronayne told Mr Lea in a letter that "provision must be made, in the interests of diversity and freedom of expression, for full access for the media. Failure to amend your decision will inevitably lead to fears of imbalance in the subsequent coverage of the hearing".
Mr Ronayne said it was up to editorial managements to decide what to do if the restriction was not lifted. An appropriate response might be an agreement between all media outlets to boycott the hearings.
While no date has been set for the opening of substantive hearings into the Woods case, it is unlikely they will begin this month. A legal challenge in a separate case by a Cork doctor, Dr James Barry, is likely to delay this and other hearings, the Medical Council's barrister, Mr Kevin Feeney SC, told the High Court yesterday.