The Department of Health did not regard the BTSB's organisational problems in the early 1980s as serious enough to warrant direct intervention, a senior civil servant told the tribunal yesterday.
Mr Paul Barron, assistant secretary to the Department, said the blood bank had a "high reputation" at the time, and a highly-regarded director, Dr Jack O'Riordan. The Department had no reason to suspect there was any problem with the medical or scientific competence of the agency.
Mr Barron confirmed that the Department had identified weaknesses within the management structure of the BTSB, but he said primary responsibility for dealing with them rested with the board.
For the Department to intervene, there would have had to be an extremely serious problem, and it did not see such a problem at the time.
Mr Barron was being questioned about the steps taken by the Department to ensure that an effective management structure was in place at the BTSB at the height of the AIDS crisis.
The tribunal heard that the need for reform in the area was first identified in 1980. Three years later an inter-departmental memo said management problems at the agency would "sooner rather than later bring about deterioration in the overall quality of the service".
But a separation of medical and administrative powers did not come until January 1986, when the BTSB's first chief executive officer was appointed on a consultancy basis.
Mr Barron rejected a suggestion by counsel for the Irish Haemophilia Society, Mr Martin Hayden SC, that the Department did nothing to advance the issue during this period. He said two "financially-minded" individuals had been appointed to the BTSB's decision-making board in an attempt to buttress it in the financial area.
Mr Barron said the BTSB had been given a broad measure of independence, requiring intervention from the Department only in a crisis. It was known that there was resistance from BTSB medical staff to a non-medical chief, and he could only conclude that this contributed to the delay in reforming its structures.
Later, Mr Barron said he was not aware of any study undertaken by the Department of how governmental cutbacks in the late 1980s would affect services for haemophiliacs. He believed the problem of AIDS in the haemophiliac community was taken very seriously at the time. However, he was not aware of any service being "put under the microscope" to see how people were suffering.
Asked if there was a greater healthcare problem at the time than that affecting haemophiliacs, Mr Barron replied that the biggest problem was maintaining the fabric of the healthcare system and "just keeping the show on the road as best we could". If haemophilia services suffered, he said, they suffered in the company of other services.
