The newly appointed Medical Council has elected RCSI Professor of Psychiatry, Kieran Murphy, as its new President.

Professor Murphy said: “The primary responsibility of the Medical Council lies in the protection of the public. In addition, the Medical Council has a role in supporting and regulating doctors to ensure the public’s protection. The patient-doctor relationship is a privileged one that is dependent on the patient’s trust in the doctor’s professionalism.

“The role of the Medical Council is to safeguard the public by ensuring that the quality of the doctor’s competence, behaviours and relationships that underlie this professionalism is maintained in the patient-doctor relationship. We must therefore have processes for ensuring patient safety that are efficient, transparent and fair to both the general public and doctors.

“Implementation of the Medical Practitioner’s Act 2007 poses a formidable challenge for the new Medical Council. To fulfil these statutory requirements, we need to modernise and reform our structures, incorporating both the traditional committee structures with working group models which have specific objectives and time frames. There are important challenges ahead for the new Medical Council. Although guided by our recent history, we must look forward and work tirelessly to ensure we fulfil our obligations. The public and doctors are depending on us.”