An instruction by the chief executive officer of the Blood Transfusion Service Board in 1989 not to destroy any documents was ignored by Pelican House, the tribunal was told yesterday.
However, it emerged that while all records relating to the dispatch of blood products to hospitals by Pelican House prior to 1986 have been shredded by the BTSB, records of dispatches from the Cork centre of the BTSB are still on file and will be made available to the tribunal.
Dr Emer Lawlor, the BTSB's present deputy medical director, said she wished to correct earlier evidence she had given. She said all dispatch records at Pelican House were destroyed in 1993, not 1995, as she has said previously.
Having re-examined the matter, she said a letter from the BTSB's then chief technical officer, Mr Sean Hanratty, to the board's solicitor in March 1995 stated that "other than order books from 1982 onwards and records of stock received by the BTSB from 1983 onwards, all other records of blood products received and issued prior to 1986 were shredded and disposed of in 1993 by the BTSB".
She said: "I have been unable to ascertain why the documents were destroyed and disposed of in 1993, although I've learnt that the equivalent documents held in the Cork centre of the BTSB were not destroyed and accordingly are available to this tribunal.
"I can only infer that following settlement of the haemophiliac litigation against the BTSB and other State parties in and around 1991, BTSB officials concluded that such documentation was no longer needed," she said.
She said it was "certainly very unfortunate" that they had been destroyed. They were the only way the BTSB would have been able to link blood components to hospitals when carrying out their hepatitis C and HIV lookbacks, she said.
She said all other donor and medical records were kept.
Questioned by Mr John Trainor SC, for the Irish Haemophilia Society, Dr Lawlor said the then CEO of the BTSB, Mr Ted Keyes, had written to staff in 1989 ordering that no documents be destroyed, because litigation by haemophiliacs was pending.
She agreed litigation had been entered into against the BTSB by persons with HIV infection in 1991.
Counsel asked if she was aware that in 1993 litigation was commenced against drug companies by haemophiliacs. Dr Lawlor said she was not aware of when this started.
Mr Trainor said the dispatch records would have been critical for the purposes of identifying which product from which drug company caused which infection in which haemophiliac.
Dr Lawlor said all they would have done was shown which hospitals received the products. Hospital records would have details of which patients received which products, she said.
Counsel asked: "Is it not the case that their destruction would have assisted the defence of drug companies?" The tribunal chairwoman, Judge Alison Lindsay, said this was a very unfair question.
Dr Lawlor said the documents would have been stored in a warehouse by a storage company and Mr Hanratty, who died in 1996, would have had responsibility for them. She did not think the storage company was given a list of persons authorised to have access to them.
The documents would not have been logged in and out then as they would be today, she said.