The Department of Health received erroneous information from the Blood Transfusion Service Board about the safety of Pelican House products used by haemophiliacs, the Lindsay tribunal was told yesterday.
Mr Paul Barron, an assistant secretary at the Department, said information received from the board to the effect that all blood products had been heat-treated to guard against HIV from January 1985 was not just inadequate, "it was incorrect".
Untreated BTSB factor 9, in fact, continued to be used up to February 1986, infecting seven haemophiliacs, five of whom have since died.
Mr Barron was explaining how the former minister for health, Mr Barry Desmond, came to make a number of erroneous statements on the matter in late 1985.
In October that year, Mr Desmond said in a speech to the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, that "the haemophilia population is now protected through the use of only heattreated products".
In November 1985, Mr Desmond told the Dail the BTSB had been using only heat-treated products since January 1st, 1985.
Mr Barron said the "only explanation" he could give was that the Department, which prepared both the minister's speech and the parliamentary statement, had been given the wrong information by the BTSB.
Questioned by counsel for the tribunal, Mr Gerry Durcan SC, Mr Barron agreed the Department would have taken a serious view of the matter. It was very difficult for the Department to make correct judgments unless it had correct information, and over a sustained period the Department did not have correct information.
Mr Barron added that, from a review of documentation, it appeared the Department was not aware of the discovery in 198586 that a number of haemophilia B patients had been infected with untreated BTSB factor 9.
The former BTSB chief executive, Mr Ted Keyes, told the tribunal he believed the decision-making board, on which a Department representative sat, was informed of the infections at a meeting in June 1986.
Mr Barron said there was absolutely no evidence to indicate the Department's representative was aware of the infections.
Later, Mr Barron described how the Department's hands were "for the most part" tied by government spending embargoes during the late 1980s.
He was explaining why requests for extra staff from the National Drugs Advisory Board were not met and why it took over three years for St James's Hospital to receive approval for a social worker to care for infected haemophiliacs.
Mr Barron agreed it was "not good" that the Department took 17 months merely to reply to the hospital's request. However, he said he believed the hospital would have known where it stood, and an earlier response might not have been any more positive.
