THERE was a direct conflict of evidence between civil servants at the tribunal off inquiry yesterday. Two staff members at the Department of Health's public health division said their superior, a higher executive officer, Mr Thomas O'Neill, was responsible for arranging that a backdated authorisation form be placed in an anti-D file at the Department, days after the hepatitis-C scandal broke in February 1994 and after the anti-D product had actually been withdrawn from distribution.
Mr O'Neill said one of them was responsible.
Mr Michael Collins, a clerical assistant at the Department's medical division, said that on February 23rd, 1994, he noticed in a file that the anti-D manufacturing licence had not been renewed for five years. He brought this to the "immediate attention" of his superior, Mr O'Neill. He rang the National Drugs Advisory Board (NDAB) and requested a one-page renewal form (to cover the five-year lapse). Mr O'Neill had "instructed" him to do so, he said.
"Would you have done it on your own initiative?" asked Mr James Nugent, counsel for the tribunal. "Under no circumstances," responded Mr Collins.
Ms Madeline Meade, an executive officer in the medical division, said she recollected Mr Collins making the phone call to the NDAB and saying he was "doing so on behalf of Thomas O'Neill". She agreed "wholeheartedly" that Mr Collins was "not the sort of person to take it on himself". She was aware of the controversy then raging over anti-D, but did not know it had been withdrawn by the BTSB at that stage.
Mr Thomas O'Neill agreed with Mr Nugent he was the person "upon whom the responsibility for product authorisation in the Department lay". He did not remember "a conversation" with Mr Collins about the out-of-date anti-D product authorisation.
"I remember Michael asking me a question," he said. "What do we do in this circumstance?" he [Mr Collins] had asked him. As to whether he was aware of the "considerable" anti-D controversy at the time, Mr O'Neill said he was not. He was also unaware that his Department "was in a turmoil over the anti-D problem", as Mr Nugent put it.
He did not tell Mr Collins to do anything.
Mr O'Neill: He asked what will we do. I told him what we would ado.
Mr Justice Finlay: Did you expect him to go off and do it?
Mr O'Neill: I did not expect him to do anything.
He said that what had happened occurred because of how Mr Collins "interpreted what I said to him". Mr Nugent then asked why Mr O'Neill signed the document when it arrived at the Department. Mr O'Neill said it was one of a number of documents presented to him "and I just simply signed them". He had signed it without looking at it.
Mr O'Neill told Mr Patrick Hanratty, counsel for the NDAB, that he had no memory of attending a meeting at the NDAB May 26th, 1994, which dealt the one-page renewal and "a serious row" broken out between the department of Health and the over it.
When the minutes were produced, which listed him among the attendance, he said "I don't remember that meeting at all." He could not recall it either when told it had taken place in the same building as the tribunal itself was being conducted, or when an extract from the minutes was read stating that he had told the meeting he had issued the one-page renewal authorisation to the BTSB.
