Doctors and consultants in Ireland
Every doctor practising in Ireland has to be registered with the Medical Council. That is not a professional courtesy, it is the law, and the register is public.
The search is at medicalcouncil.ie. You can look someone up by name or by registration number, and it will show you their registration status and their qualifications.
General registration is not specialist registration
This is the part worth understanding, because it is where the word consultant does its work.
The register is divided. General registration allows a doctor to practise medicine. Specialist registration is a separate division, and a doctor can only practise independently as a specialist if they hold it. So a doctor may be perfectly properly registered and still not be a registered specialist in the field you are seeing them about.
If you have been referred to a consultant cardiologist, the thing to check is not merely that they appear on the register. It is that they appear in the Specialist Division and that the specialty listed is the one you were referred for. That takes one extra look and it is the whole point of the exercise.
The Trainee Specialist Division is a third category, for doctors in recognised training posts. Someone in it is on a supervised path towards specialist registration rather than already holding it.
What the register will not tell you
It will not tell you whether a doctor is any good, and it will not tell you about complaints unless they have resulted in a sanction that affects registration status. Fitness to practise inquiries are largely a separate process.
It also will not help you find a doctor. It is a verification tool, not a directory. If you are looking for a GP taking new patients, that is a phone call, not a search.
Private consultants and fees
Nothing on the register relates to what a consultant charges or whether they hold a contract with any insurer. Registration and billing are unconnected. If you are paying privately, the questions about cost and cover are for the consultant’s secretary and your insurer, and neither is a matter the Medical Council concerns itself with.
Other health professions
Doctors are only one register. Nurses and midwives are held by the NMBI, whose register updates in real time and will show you whether fitness to practise conditions are attached, which is unusually transparent. Dentists are with the Dental Council. Physiotherapists, dietitians, social workers, radiographers and a good many others are with CORU.
All of these carry protected titles, so using them without registration is an offence rather than merely a fib. The full list of which body holds what is on the register index.
Checked . Registers move and bodies get renamed. If a link here is dead, the register almost certainly still exists somewhere else on the same organisation's site.