Blood donations were routinely tested for the HIV virus in Limerick two months before testing began in Dublin, it was claimed at the Lindsay tribunal yesterday.
A former chief technologist with the Limerick Blood Transfusion Service, Mr Michael Ryan, said there was rivalry between the Limerick service, a private operation, and the Blood Transfusion Service Board (BTSB). He clearly recollected it was a matter of pride that Limerick had introduced HIV testing before Pelican House.
Dr Joan Power, a consultant haematologist and regional director of the Cork centre of the BTSB, said there was documentation to show blood donations in Limerick had been tested for HIV in August 1985. One donor record sheet opened to the tribunal showed a donor had been screened for HIV on August 12th, 1985, by the Limerick service and there were other similar records, she said.
Documents also showed HIV testing began in Cork on October 1st, 1985, and in Dublin on October 21st, 1985.
However, letters written by the medical director of the Limerick service in September and October 1985, opened to the tribunal, said testing did not commence in Limerick until October 22nd, 1985.
Counsel for the tribunal Ms Grainne Clohessy put this to Mr Ryan. He said the medical director at the time, Dr Sheila Kelleher, was mistaken in the correspondence. "I am quite sure we began two months before them [the BTSB]," he said.
Counsel asked Mr Ryan about a letter he wrote to the medical director of a US blood bank in September 1985 in which he said his transfusion service would "be obliged to start testing in the near future".
Mr Ryan said he wanted the advice of the US director without telling him Limerick had already introduced the Wellcome test.
Cross-examined by counsel for the BTSB, Mr Michael McGrath SC, he agreed it was unusual that Dr Kelleher had got her information wrong "not once, but twice" in letters relating to when HIV testing began in Limerick.