A test to detect HIV in blood donations could have been ordered by the Blood Transfusion Service Board a number of months before it did so, an employee of the board told the tribunal.
Mr John Keating, a former chief technical officer at Pelican House, said he wanted to evaluate test kits in April or May 1985 but they weren't ordered until late June and no test was put in place until October 1985.
Mr Keating wrote a discussion document in May 1985 entitled "AIDS: to test or not to test, where lies the answer?" in which he said the need to test might be "forced" on the BTSB by public opinion and by hospitals demanding safer products.
He told the tribunal it took almost two months for sample HIV test kits to be delivered once they were ordered. He was concerned at the delay and contacted the manufacturers to see if they were treating Ireland as a backwater, he said.
When he evaluated four available tests, he found two would have been acceptable, but the best one was a Wellcome test, which did not become available until July 1985. Another, the Abbott test, made by a company with plants in Ireland, was not as easy to use but there was nothing wrong with it and it could have been implemented on an interim basis while the Wellcome test was awaited, he said.
Counsel for the tribunal, Mr Gerard Durcan SC, put it to him that Abbott sent out a press release in March 1985 saying its tests were available. He asked Mr Keating if anybody asked for them then. Mr Keating said he didn't think so.
Counsel said the earlier the BTSB ordered tests, the earlier it could have hoped to implement them. Mr Keating accepted this but reiterated it was difficult to get tests when the BTSB ordered them in June 1985.