The board of the Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS) has initiated an internal disciplinary inquiry into the regional director of its Munster centre, Dr Joan Power.
Dr Power is the doctor credited with discovering the Hepatitis C scandal.
The Irish Times has learned that the chief executive of the IBTS, Mr Andrew Kelly, wrote to Dr Power last month setting out his concerns about Dr Power's conduct as regional director.
The letter also raised the sale of blood components by the Munster centre to commercial companies contrary to a policy set down by the national medical director of the organisation in 1997. The IBTS last month sent a full report on this issue to the Tánaiste and Minister for Health, Ms Harney.
The letter from Mr Kelly at the beginning of December gave Dr Power until December 16th to reply to the concerns set out.
When contacted by this newspaper about its inquiry into Dr Power's conduct, an IBTS spokeswoman in Dublin said it did not comment on internal personnel matters.
Dr Power, when contacted yesterday, would make no comment.
The IBTS inquiry comes after Dr Power's decision to write to the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, in October seeking an inquiry into issues affecting the IBTS, including the delay in the provision of a new premises in Cork and what she maintained was the dismantling of the infrastructure of the Munster blood centre. Dr Power was widely praised for exposing the infection of up to 2,000 women with the Hepatitis C virus in the early 1990s.
However, she has been criticised over a delay in informing 28 Munster patients in the early 1990s that they had tested positive for Hepatitis C. The former minister for health Mr Martin promised a new inquiry into this delay but it has not yet been established.
In August 2002 Dr Power told RTÉ's Prime Time that after the Finlay tribunal into the Hepatitis C contamination scandal - before which she admitted she made a mistake in not immediately informing donors of test results - "an official of the Department of Health told a senior colleague of mine that they had me on this issue . . . I was clearly told I would be buried on this issue".
Asked whether she felt she was being targeted because of her role as a whistleblower, she replied: "I can find no other reason." The Department of Health later issued a statement denying it was conducting a vendetta against Dr Power.