Professional Regulation And Discipline: "Misconduct" And "Poor Professional Performance" In Irish Law

Corbally v The Medical Council & Others [2015] IESC 9

Background

In 2012, rejecting the advice of its legal assessor, the Fitness to Practise Committee ("FPC") of the Medical Council (the "Council") recommended to the Council that it make a determination of "poor professional performance" in respect of Professor Corbally, a distinguished and experienced surgeon with a practice previously rated by the Council itself as "outstanding." The recommendation was in connection with what the Supreme Court described as the Professor's "...once-off error in a handwritten description of a proposed surgical procedure which was not serious in its nature or effect, which misled no-one, and which had no consequences..." Although not caused by the error, but in circumstances of unfortunate, associated, confusion, another surgeon in the hospital concerned carried out a lingual frenulectomy, rather than the actually-required upper frenulum release procedure.  However, this was