Formal specialty recognition for interventional radiology (IR) is an “urgent” requirement, according to the RCSI Faculty of Radiologists and Radiation Oncologists.
The Medical Council rejected the Faculty’s application for specialty recognition in June 2025 following a five-year process, show documents released by the regulator under Freedom of Information law.
The Medical Independent has also learned that the Council’s application mechanism has been temporarily closed since late 2022. The last specialty recognised by the Council was military medicine in 2015.
Following recognition as a specialty, the next step is for the training body to apply to the Council for accreditation of the associated training programme. There are formalised funding streams in place in the HSE to support accredited training posts and programmes.
The Department of Health is currently working with the Council to review the specialty recognition process. “This review includes the principles that should underpin the process and how the Department and other stakeholders can best support this into the future,” said a Department spokesperson.
A spokesperson for the Faculty of Radiologists and Radiation Oncologists said the Council’s decision on IR was “not in the interest” of patients or the development of postgraduate training in Ireland.
Specialty recognition would facilitate funding of the IR training pathway, delivery of “optimally trained and accredited” interventional radiologists, improved workforce planning, and equitable and timely access for patients.
It would counter any perception among trainees that IR is “less secure or less valued than recognised specialties, which can deter potential applicants and complicate long-term succession planning”.
“Currently there are deficits in out-of-hours emergency care based on geographic patient location and there are too few specialists in Ireland in comparison to international benchmarks. This IR training pathway is required to deliver the increase in interventional radiology physicians and on-call IR care, based on the HSE workforce analysis up to 2040.”
The Faculty described the application process as “time-consuming and adversarial by design”. It added that the Council’s assessor team “may have benefitted from subject experts in active medical practice who were familiar with the impact of interventional radiology on patient care in hospital practice”.
According to a Medical Council spokesperson, two applications for specialty recognition have been rejected in the last five years (forensic psychiatry in 2021 and IR in 2025) and no applications have been withdrawn. The spokesperson said the five-year timeframe for IR was not typical and due to several factors.
They said its trained assessors for specialty recognition have “a wealth of experience undertaking inspections and accreditation activity” on its behalf.
The Council “recognises there are improvements which could be made to the current process”. It will review stakeholder feedback such as that provided by the Faculty of Radiologists and Radiation Oncologists. See news feature.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.