The Supreme Court has upheld a lower court's decision to dismiss a finding of Poor Professional Performance against leading consultant paediatrician Professor Martin Corbally.
A finding of PPP was made against Dr Corbally by the Medical Council's Fitness to Practise Committee after an incorrect `tongue-tie' procedure was carried out on a young patient of his by another doctor.
After making the finding of PPP, the committee in 2012 imposed a sanction of admonishment on him arising from an admitted error in his notes concerning the required procedure for a two-year-old girl, a private patient at Our Lady's Hospital in Crumlin.
The girl required an upper labial frenulum but an incorrect tongue tie procedure was carried out by another doctor to whom Dr Corbally delegated the surgery after being called to an emergency.
Dr Corbally carried out corrective surgery shortly afterwards and the child made a full recovery.
Dr Corbally launched a High Court challenge against the committee's findings, and the sanction imposed.
In overturning the finding of PPP and a sanction of admonishment in November 2013, the President of the High Court Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns found the error arose from a systems failure at the hospital for which Dr Corbally was not responsible.
Those failures, which have since been remedied, included that the hospital's drop down computer menu concerning management of procedures only allowed for a tongue-tie procedure to be inserted and not an upper labial frenulum.
Because the 2007 Act allowed for no appeal against a sanction imposed for PPP, it was appropriate to read the Act as requiring a single lapse or offence must be "serious", he said.
This error was not very serious, made no real contribution to the eventual procedure carried out and a non-causative lapse must be seen as less serious than one which causes damage.
The "real problem" lay with hospital systems which did not allow for Dr Corbally's detailed and correct description of the required procedure on the child's admission card to be properly transcribed, Mr Justice Kearns said.
His judgment involved the first ever court interpretation of the meaning of PPP in the 2007 Act and, in its appeal, the council argued his decision means a finding of PPP must be based on assessment of a fair sample of a doctor's work and cannot be based on a not-very-serious, once-off incident.
That finding by the High Court President was appealed to the Supreme Court.
This morning the five judges of the upper court unanimously dismissed the Medical Council's appeal, and upheld Mr Justice Kearns' decision.
Mr Justice Hardiman, whose judgment the other members of the court agreed with, said in the circumstances he was satisfied to dismiss the appeal.
Dr Corbally, with an address at Corballis, Donabate, Co Dublin was "not merely a competent doctor but a distinguished one," and that the case was "an unfortunate and in many ways a sad one."
The court’s decision has important implications for the regulation of the medical and healthcare professions has opened at the Supreme Court.
The court was asked to define the proper meaning of "poor professional performance" in the 2007 Medical Practitioners Act in the Medical Council's appeal against the dismissal of a PPP finding against Dr Corbally.
