MR Jerry O'Dwyer, Secretary of the Department of Health, claimed yesterday that the Blood Transfusion Service Board (BTSB) prepared to introduce a hepatitis C screening test during the summer of 1991 knowing approval was imminent from the Minister.
Completing his evidence at the tribunal, Mr O'Dwyer said he had been put on the spot on Monday when asked by counsel about a apparent three month gap between the Department's decision to introduce a hepatitis C screening test on May 29th, 1991, and the BTSB being informed of this on September 3rd of that year. The screening programme began on October 1st.
He also said that he had a clear memory that part of a £1 million Department contingency fund was to be used for setting up the test, should that funding be needed. At a meeting with the BTSB on June 7th there was a detailed discussion of the costings and the necessary arrangements, he said.
A Department letter of September 3rd was only "the formal confirmation of clearly a message which had been conveyed to the Blood Transfusion Service Board to get on with the job".
Asked if there had been communication from the Department's administration to the BTSB between June and September, he said he would have to check. He could not recall if there was anything on file which dated the approval of the then Minister for Health, Mr Brendan Howlin.
He agreed with Mr James Nugent SC, for the tribunal that a BTSB meeting on July 17th indicated that "the ball was still in the Department's court".
He said he had a clear memory that part of the £1 million contingency fund would be used to fund the hepatitis C screening test.
He presented to the tribunal a financial statement in which the £1 million figure was presented as "AIDS/Contingency".
"There is no other reference to a specific provision being made to the introduction of screening ... I have a clear memory that one of the items most likely to arise in 1991 was the funding of the introduction of the screening test," he said.
He denied it was "a secret fund" but accepted that Mr Donal Devitt, assistant secretary, and Mr Frank Ahern, principal officer with responsibility for liaising with the BTSB, were unaware of the fund's purpose. However, he said it would be known within the Department that such a fund probably existed, as a contingency fund was set aside in the budget for every year.
"As we moved on through the year the question of whether the funding would be for the screening would obviously be a matter for discussion," he said. However, the fund "survived" to the end of the year and was then allocated elsewhere.
The tribunal also heard that a report written by a Department civil servant in July 1990 described the BTSB's main concern in seeking to have screening tests introduced as its "liability if sued by those people who may get hepatitis C in a mild form from blood transfusion, rather than the possibility of death resulting of post transfusion hepatitis C".
The report's author, Ms Delores Moran, a Department higher executive officer in 1990, said it had been prepared for administrative purposes for her superior, Mr Ahern, and very deliberately did not include medical information on blood safety, as that would not have been relevant in the context. It had no significance for the timing of the test's introduction.
"This was purely identifying issues other than the safety issue, which was being dealt with by the medical people," she said.