The CAI presented to the Joint Oireachtas Committee (JOC), on Health on Wednesday 25th April, 2018. The Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health, is made up of all levels of politicians – Deputys/Senators.
The presenters were: Tony Accardi – President, James Cosgrave – Past President, Lyndsey O’ Leary – X ray Officer, Olivia O’ Leary Veal – X-Ray Committee and Richard Brown – Secretary General of the World Federation of Chiropractic, (WFC).
We were made aware one week prior to the meeting that the Department of Health, (DOH) and the Faculty of Radiologists would present directly after us. We tried to arrange for all of us to meet at the same time, but were not successful. This meant, that we could not dispute comments made by the two other parties.
Ahead of the 25th meeting, members of our association met with members of the JOC Committee, individually. All of the JOC committee members seemed favourabe towards us at these meetings, which proved very beneficial.
The structure of the meeting was that we were given an opportunity for an opening statement and then the committee members asked questions. The questions are asked in succession and recorded. When all questions were asked, (approximately 15), we then got an opportunity to answer them. The question and answer session went very well – we are confident that we handled the meeting very well. This was not only our impression but that of our Public Affairs Representative and Richard Brown. Dr. Brown did an excellent job presenting the international perspective. We covered all items that we planned on.
The Association would like to thank each of the members that presented to the JOC as well as Clive Dennis, committee member. Each has sacrificed many hours over the past 5 months, for this cause. Great thanks also goes to the European Chiropractic Union (ECU), for their support, advice and input over the past 5 months.
The CAI greatly appreciates the WFC for allocating the Secretary General, Dr. Richard Brown, as he dedicated his expertise and time to the CAI. He put a great deal of effort into this through: research, editing documents, advice and his testimony on the day of the meeting.
The meeting was televised and is avalable for viewing at the following website:
https://beta.oireachtas.ie/en/committees/32/committee-on-health/videos/
Copy and paste this link into you browser and skip forward to 2:54 for the CAI session.
Now that the meetings are over, the Joint Oireachtas Committee will review the testimony and decide if they are going to send a recommendation to the Government: e.g. include Chiropractors in the Ionising Radiation Bill. Then it is up to the Government, as to whether they will heed the comments of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health.
