The High Court has refused to confirm a Veterinary Council of Ireland decision striking veterinarian Valentin Ciobanu from the register over a drug-trafficking conviction recorded in Romania five years before he was first registered in Ireland.
The Council decided in May 2024 to remove Ciobanu's name after establishing that he had been convicted in Romania in April 2013. It used section 84 of the Veterinary Practice Act 2005, a summary procedure which allows removal from the register on the basis of a sufficiently serious conviction without going through the usual fitness-to-practise inquiry process.
The case arose after the Council received a complaint in April 2022 from the owner of Mulroy Vets and Letterkenny Small Animals Veterinary Hospital in Co Donegal. Ciobanu later acknowledged that he had been investigated over supplying ketamine, had spent three months in detention and received a three-year fully suspended prison sentence. Romanian veterinary authorities had also suspended him from practice for one year from July 2017.
The central question was whether section 84 could be used where the conviction happened before Irish registration.
Mr Justice O'Higgins held that it could not. He found that the wording referring to a person whose name "is registered" and who "is convicted" meant that the conviction must occur during the period of registration.
The judge said this interpretation was reinforced by the broader statutory scheme. Pre-registration convictions are intended to be considered when someone first applies for registration. Where registration was obtained through a false or fraudulent declaration or misrepresentation, the Act also provides a separate fitness-to-practise route under section 76.
The court stressed that section 84 is an exceptional procedure. It bypasses several safeguards available in a full disciplinary inquiry and offers a binary outcome: strike-off or no strike-off.
Because the 2013 conviction pre-dated Ciobanu's Irish registration in 2018, section 84 was not correctly engaged. The Council's application to confirm the strike-off was refused.