COUNSEL for the Blood Transfusion Service Board "earnestly" asked that people "withhold judgment" just yet. Mr Donal O'Donnell SC asked the public the media and people making public statements to "do what the tribunal will undoubtedly do, withhold judgment and consider these events in their context and in all their complexity before coming to a measured, balanced, and dispassionate judgment".
He said the BTSB intended "do all in its power to co operate in every possible way with the tribunal". The tribunal had been able to put forward "117 propositions of fact" and the BTSB had been able to agree either wholly or in part with these.
The BTSB "accepts responsibility for the events giving rise to the infection of anti D with hepatitis C and its consequences and it does not seek to justify or excuse them", and it accepts that "serious errors" were made.
It was "a matter of most profound regret to the BTSB that it, as a caring institution, and designed only to assist in beneficial medical treatment, should have become the source of illness, injury, distress, and anxiety."
Mr O'Donnell said that it was more than 20 years since the preparation of anti D from patient X's plasma was ended, and five years since the Middlesex hospital had notified the BTSB about the samples. "In those circumstances it is inevitable that some witnesses will be unavailable, some unfortunately have died, and in nearly all cases memories may differ," he said.
Dr J.L. Wilkinson, the former deputy director (assistant chief medical consultant) at the BTSB, had died. Dr J.P. O'Riordan, the former chief medical consultant, was unwell, "and has not been in a position to or prepared to co operate with the BTSB".
Given the sympathy everyone felt for the victims, "it is easy to portray this as a simple distinction between victims and villains, with the BTSB cast as the principal villain," he said. But it "is much more complex and blame and condemnation cannot be conveniently attributed".
Mr O'Donnell said he believed it was a story "of high hopes and good intentions and great achievements, ultimately undermined by muddled decision making and individual fateful errors".
