Remediation courses for Dentists and Dental Professionals facing a Dental Council complaint, fitness to practise inquiry or allegation of professional misconduct

Start with the nine Core Set courses, then add the courses that match the concern in your letter. The Core Set covers the standards you are measured against, through the Ethics and Professionalism courses written to the Code of Practice (2022), and insight, reflection, remediation, the risk of repetition and the process itself. Each course is €100 (€70 with Bulk Buy 10); as a Bulk Buy of 2 or more, two courses are €175 and ten are €700.

The Fitness to Practise Committee decides whether there is a prima facie case and holds the inquiry; the Council decides the sanction; the High Court confirms it. Under the Dentists Act 1985 the Council or any person applies to the Committee for an inquiry, and there is no Preliminary Proceedings Committee. A sanction, from advice to erasure, takes effect only on High Court confirmation or once a 21-day window passes.

Yes, through the High Court. Under section 44 of the Dentists Act 1985 the Council may apply to the High Court for suspension, and the Annual Report 2024 records one dentist suspended that way in 2024. The Act sections and Council pages reviewed set out no other interim measure. If you receive notice of such an application, contact your adviser the same day.

Yes. Healthcare Ethics Courses issues a dated certificate for every course, recording 2 CPD hours, the course title and the date of completion. CPD is not yet mandatory in law for dentists in Ireland, but the Council says “the ethical requirement for dentists to undertake CPD remains unchanged”, and its CPD Guidance was revised in December 2019. Record the course and your reflection in your own CPD record.

Access runs for twelve months from purchase; you start immediately and work at your own pace. The certificate records the date you completed the course, and that date does not change. If the Council, the Committee or an employer asks for recent evidence, you buy the course again: within twelve months a repeat is half price, and after that it is the full €100.

No. No course, from us or from anyone else, determines whether the Fitness to Practise Committee finds a prima facie case, what the inquiry finds, or what sanction the Council decides. What a course can do is help you build the insight and reflection your response needs, and give you a dated, verifiable certificate to evidence it.

Through a written reflection that shows the four things set out in the section on what a response needs to show, from understanding what went wrong to meaningful change, with a dated certificate attached as evidence of the remediation. The Insight, Reflection and Remediation courses take each of the four in turn, and your adviser can tell you when to put the reflection forward.

Yes, you can take them: there is no registration check and no requirement to hold current registration. Whether a course satisfies a condition under section 40 of the Dentists Act 1985, or an undertaking, is for the Council to decide. Read the wording with your adviser, and where it requires the Council’s agreement in advance, obtain that first.

The Code of Practice regarding Professional Behaviour and Ethical Conduct (2022) is the standard a boundaries allegation is measured against, whether it concerns a patient or a colleague: a relationship that became too close, a dual relationship, contact outside the practice, gifts, conduct online, or an examination questioned on consent. Take advice before responding, and before contacting the patient or anyone connected with them.

It is a separate ground, but not a separate route. Alleged unfitness to practise by reason of physical or mental disability is distinct from professional misconduct under section 38(1) of the Dentists Act 1985, yet the Act sends both to the same Fitness to Practise Committee, and the Council pages reviewed describe no separate health route. The Committee can still ask how the condition affected your practice and what you have put in place.

Yes. A dentist who qualified elsewhere is answering a concern and learning an unfamiliar system at the same time. The vocabulary differs: an application for an inquiry rather than a complaint to a committee, a Fitness to Practise Committee that also screens the allegation first, erasure rather than striking off, and sanctions that wait on the High Court. Since 6 May 2025 a prohibition or restriction on practising elsewhere is itself a ground.

Yes, with one caution. At the end of 2024 the Council’s registers held 836 dental nurses, 646 dental hygienists, 79 orthodontic therapists and 40 clinical dental technicians beside 3,783 dentists. The Register of Dental Nurses is voluntary, and the Council pages reviewed do not say whether its fitness to practise process applies to auxiliary dental workers as it does to dentists.

Yes. Courses are taken privately online. We never share participant details with the Dental Council, the Fitness to Practise Committee, the High Court, an employer, a union or an indemnifier unless you choose to do so yourself. Nothing on the certificate says why you took the course, and you can decide after completing it whether to include it in a response or an undertaking.