The board of the Irish Blood Transfusion Service is to review its decision to centralise testing at its Dublin headquarters after an independent panel of experts recommended dual testing in Dublin and Cork.
The panel, which was charged with examining the issue last March, said testing services at the IBTS's Cork centre should not just be maintained but enhanced with additional infrastructure and expertise.
Mr Michael McLoone, chairman of the board of the IBTS, said it welcomed the report despite the fact that its core recommendation ran counter to its decision on testing.
"We welcomed obviously the finding that the blood system in Ireland is safe. But the board clearly acknowledges that there are issues in the report that need to be addressed," he said.
The board is due to consider the report in detail at a meeting next month, and a decision on whether to implement its recommendations will follow.
The report, which calls for the IBTS's Cork centre to be developed to a similar standard as its headquarters at St James's Hospital, Dublin, has major cost implications.
Mr McLoone said these would be examined before recommendations were made to the Minister for Health, Mr Martin. He added that "a dynamic programme of work" was already under way at the IBTS to implement the recommendations of many reports on the service over the past eight years.
The agency is already examining up to nine sites in Cork for the development of a new centre for the city and region. However, Government funding for the initiative has yet to be secured.
Also welcoming the report yesterday, Mr Batt O'Keeffe, chairman of the Southern Health Board, which has campaigned against the downgrading of services in Cork, said: "My members are now requesting immediate action by the IBTS in providing this new centre, and also requesting our Minister . . . to provide the necessary funding."
He was speaking at a press conference at the National Blood Centre, on a platform shared with the IBTS and the authors of the report, Prof Tommy Söderström, medical director of the Swedish Karolinska Institute; Prof John David Cash, president of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh; and Prof Thomas Zuck, professor emeritus of the University of Cincinnati's Medical Centre.
Asked what merit the panel saw in centralising testing, Prof Zuck said the "most obvious one" was to save money.
The report noted that a recent IBTS document had claimed that consolidation of testing in one laboratory would produce labour savings of €320,000.
Like the other panellists, Prof Zuck criticised the fact that the computer systems in Dublin and Cork were currently incompatible. However, he said, to say the transfusion system was unsafe on that basis would be unduly alarming the public.
Of the share of work between Cork and Dublin, Prof Zuck added that the panel envisaged each centre testing its own collections whilst serving as a back-up for each other.
The Minister for Health, Mr Martin, said yesterday he was considering the conclusions of the report, and would not be drawn on the issue of funding.
