The Department of Health did everything it could to help the BTSB overcome its financial difficulties in the 1980s, the director of the Department's finance unit said yesterday.
Mr Dermot Smyth told the Lindsay tribunal the blood bank "virtually got everything they were looking for" from the Department during the period.
Rejecting a claim by counsel for the Irish Haemophilia Society, Mr Martin Hayden SC, that the Department "sat back and did nothing" to improve either the financial or administrative state of the board, Mr Smyth cited a series of cash injections into the BTSB at a time when health funding was severely curtailed by cutbacks.
In 1980 the BTSB applied for two increases in the price of blood it could charge health boards, one of 14 per cent and the other of 20 per cent. Both were fully approved by the Department despite the fact that it meant "a significant hit for us", said Mr Smyth.
There were further rises, he said: 25 per cent in 1982, 10 per cent in 1983, 4 per cent in 1984, and two of 5 per cent in 1985. He said he believed the board got exactly what it was looking for in each case within a month of the desired date.
An exception in this regard was rises of 3 per cent in 1988 and 2.5 per cent in 1989 when the board had requested 5 per cent in each case.
Mr Smyth said the financial problems which afflicted the board were problems the BTSB made for itself. There were inefficiencies within the agency, including an absence of "very basic stuff" like purchasing/ stock controls.
Pay rewards at the BTSB also seemed out of line with what was happening generally, he said, and the Department was anxious to bring some order to the situation.
