`Door-to-door' cheque collections detailed

The cash-flow situation at the Blood Transfusion Service Board was so desperate that it used to run "door-to-door" collections of cheques rather than wait for them to be delivered to Pelican House, the tribunal heard yesterday.

Mr Edward A. Ryan, the board's accounts and personnel officer between 1974 and 1988, said cash-flow was "always" a problem for the agency and, as a result, it was under constant pressure from creditors.

Unlike previous witnesses, who said the BTSB's finances improved considerably after a £1.65 million Department of Health bail-out in 1982, Mr Ryan agreed finances were still "bleak" as late as January 1986.

He said a practice persisted up to February 1986 of making door-to-door collections of cheques from hospitals to reduce the time-span of debt collection. If a hospital had suggested putting a cheque in the post, he said, the board would have somebody go around to collect it instead.

Evidence of the board's financial difficulties around this time could be seen in a December 1985 memo by Mr Ryan to the board, saying the shortage of cash was "an immediate, grave problem".

It had got to the point, he wrote, "where threats of withholding essential supplies are being made by three major suppliers". On top of that the board's new landlords at Mespil Road had sent a solicitors' letter demanding more than £200,000 in rent.

Mr Ryan said the financial situation was "equally grave" then as in the early 1980s, when the BTSB ran up a budget deficit of more than £1 million.

He reiterated the "root problem" was the BTSB's establishment order, which failed to make clear how capital projects would be funded.

In the absence of a capital budget from the Department of Health, the board sought approval for frequent increases in the price of blood, which was charged to hospitals, to fund new developments.

At the end of his evidence yesterday, Mr Ryan said he wished to make a statement concerning three board officials who had since died and whose names had been raised in the course of the tribunal: Dr Jack O'Riordan, Mr Sean Hanratty and Dr James Wilkinson.

Mr Ryan said he had great respect for all of them and, in his opinion, they would not have done anything "out of order".