POLITICAL controversies normally become "tragedies" for government and "scandals" opposition hut, by the Minister for Health's own admission, the hepatitis C controversy is a scandal.

Mr Noonan has inherited a problem of colossal involving potentially huge claims for damages. Its genesis lies in September or October 1976, when the Blood Transfusion Services Board began using plasma from a woman, knowing she had infective hepatitis. The use of that plasma continued until early 1994.

It is a situation not of this Minister's making but the death of Mrs Brigid Ellen McCole, a mother of 12, has awakened public outrage and sharply focused attention on his performance, and that of the State generally, in this very complex and emotive affair.

The fall out has sparked off a major damage limitation exercise on the part of the Government and put Mr Noonan in the front line of public and opposition criticism.

Michael Noonan is seen as a political street fighter of considerable boldness. But here was one problem that demanded empathy not obstinacy, tenderness rather than hard headness. From now on, he must strike a delicate balance, get to the truth of the scandal while staving off political injury.

Despite Mr Noonan's breathtaking U turn in announcing, on Tuesday, a one member tribunal of inquiry to investigate all issues of doubt and uncertainty surrounding the infection of people by the anti D vaccine, he remains under pressure to answer a plethora of awkward questions.

In the final months of Mrs McCole's life, the State's legal team opposed her court application for anonymity, a decision other similarly infected women believe must have been made to put pressure on her to either drop her case or to settle early so that the BTSB would not have to admit negligence.

Opposing Mrs McCole's application for an early hearing was also viewed as an unnecessarily hostile action, given her condition.

Meanwhile, the Opposition has thrown scorn on the Minister's attempt to distance himself from the BTSB, a subsidiary of his Department. As he can hire and fire, with full supervisory powers over the board, it rebuffs his denials that there was no political direction of any kind, no hint or urging, that the BTSB admit liability in the McCole case.

Women infected through the State agency say privately they were treated as "like a crowd of radical agitators" when they sought explanations from the Department of Health. The State became their "enemy", giving no quarter, one woman said.

Demands for the truth behind their plight were greeted with the kind of condescending patience reserved for slightly dotty geriatrics. And then there was the Minister's playing down in the Dail of the significance of the file found last March - through court orders of discovery obtained by Mrs McCole's lawyers.

This documentation demonstrated that the BTSB was aware in 1976 that donor X had infective hepatitis.

The expert group led by Dr Miriam Hederman O'Brien had never seen this file but, on March 28th, the Minister of State, Mr Brian O'Shea, said in the Dail that the group in fact had the full information and denied there was anything new in the file revelations.

In May and June, the Minister maintained also that this was the case.

Fianna Fail's health spokeswoman, Ms Maire GeogheganQuinn, quickly drew attention to the Minister's remarks on RTE's Questions and Answers last Monday night that perhaps the new documents did add to what was already known. He confirmed that the Hederman O'Brien group had not been given all the information.

Now the tribunal must attempt to unravel the knots and tangles of this affair. Its terms of reference are still unknown but there are rumblings in Leinster House that the investigation will be too confined to medical matters.

If political ineptitude existed, it will he kept under wraps, Opposition TDs claim.

Mr Noonan denied to journalists that the Tanaiste, Mr Spring, exerted any pressure on him to take action, but both he and the Tanaiste shared a concern that the BTSB lodged £175,000 in court last May during the McCole case.

That was regarded as an attempt by the BTSB to put pressure on her to accept this amount, since she would have to pay legal costs if she pursued her court case and ended up being awarded less than £175,000.

It is understood that Mrs McCole would have alleged in court that the BTSB was making anti D for 14 years without the required legal licence. Her family has written to Mr Noonan. In the Dail, Ms Geoghegan Quinn posed the question as to "why retrospective product authorisations were issued in 1994 by the Department of Health".

"Did the then Minister for Health approve those retrospective authorisations? And was this done in the knowledge that the product was contaminated over the period for which retrospective authorisations were issued?" she asked.