Board should have known he was alive, says witness

A former employee of the Blood Transfusion Service Board who was believed by the board to be dead told the Lindsay tribunal yesterday…

A former employee of the Blood Transfusion Service Board who was believed by the board to be dead told the Lindsay tribunal yesterday the BTSB should have known he was alive because it presented him with an award two years ago.

Mr Edward A. Ryan, a former accounts and personnel officer with the board, said he was presented with an award by the BTSB for plasma donations two years ago and met "in passing" its current CEO, Mr Martin Hynes, at the awards ceremony.

He said he was also in receipt of a pension from the BTSB. "If they were sending me a pension, I think they should have known I was around all right," he said.

Since the tribunal began hearing evidence, Mr Ryan was referred to as deceased. He had worked with the board from 1969 to 1988 but the BTSB told the tribunal none of its accounts executives from this period was still alive to give evidence and it hired an accountant, Mr John McStay, to report to the tribunal on its finances.

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After reading details of evidence given by a former chief executive officer of the board, Mr Ted Keyes, in late September, Mr Ryan contacted the tribunal.

Counsel for the Irish Haemophilia Society, Mr Martin Hayden, said if the BTSB "had made any effort at all", it would not have been very difficult to establish whether Mr Ryan was alive or dead. He said the BTSB would have "obviously known" of his existence, given it was paying him a pension.

Mr Ryan said he had been out of the picture for a time and would not know a lot of the people in the Irish Blood Transfusion Service, as the BTSB is now known. However, he had met Mr Hynes "in passing" two years ago but he felt Mr Hynes wouldn't have known who he was.

He said the impression had been given that the first investigation into allegations of a connection between a BTSB employee, the late Mr Sean Hanratty, and a company supplying the board, Accu-Science, took place five years later than it happened.

He said he informed the board's former national director, the late Dr Jack O'Riordan, by letter in July 1985 he believed Mr Hanratty might have a 30 per cent share in the company. He discovered this during an internal audit and was obliged under the Companies Act 1983 to report it to the board.

Mr Ryan said Mr Hanratty was listed as a director of AccuScience under the name James Hanratty. He sometimes signed himself as J.J. Hanratty and he believed this was the same person as Mr Sean Hanratty. He said it "seemed strange", however, that Mr Hanratty's address in the Companies Office was in Co Monaghan, because he lived in Dublin.

Mr Ryan said he had only learnt from a legal source before stepping into the witness box that Mr Hanratty had resigned as a director of Accu-Science, which started supplying the board in 1982, in January 1983.

He understood the matter was "sorted out" in 1985.