Fine Gael has reacted combatively to the report on the legal strategy on the McCole case, describing it as "largely a rehash of political charges made by Mr Cowen before the election".
With the former Minister for Health, Mr Michael Noonan, out of the country on holidays, senior figures in the party last night mustered a stout defence of their colleague and a preliminary statement accused the new Minister of Health of failing to find a political scapegoat.
It declared that he had engaged in "an extensive, retrospective and politically motivated examination of one aspect of his predecessor's work".
"The Minister's political report is in stark contrast to the careful report of the independent counsel, Fidelma Macken. The Minister posed a number of detailed questions to the independent counsel. She has answered them but clearly not in a way that satisfies Minister Cowen's desire for a political scapegoat. Some of the answers may not have been to the Minister's liking," the statement says and suggests that he had ignored the clear findings of the independent counsel's findings.
Though the Labour Party had no formal response to the McCole report last night, sources in the party insisted that, from a preliminary reading, there was "no evidence whatsoever" to suggest the existence of a Government "legal strategy".
Mr Noonan had attempted to "do the humane thing" in dealing with the hepatitis C scandal but "the whole system stands guilty of not paying enough attention to the burning desire for truth that the women wanted . . . truth, more than money, was at stake and we agree with Brian Cowen that the system approached this as if it was just another injuries claim," the Labour sources added.
According to the same sources, while the memo of April 3rd, 1995 - which was circulated to Cabinet the next day - showed that the BTSB was negligent in its manufacture of anti-D in 1976 and 1977, there was no evidence that any Government decision was either sought or given on that occasion.
None of the Ministers joining Mr Noonan at Cabinet had seen the memo in advance, the sources said, and had instead concentrated their attentions on the publication of the report of the Expert Group, the establishment of a Tribunal to administer compensation and changes in senior management in the BTSB.
One could argue that "this is not a desirable way to do business" but, to this day, Ministers attending that meeting could not recall the Attorney General's views (in relation to BTSB negligence) because they were never discussed, the sources added.
"How does Minister Cowen feel that the passage of a memo at Cabinet could be construed as a Government decision. An urgent memo was brought to Government. That is all that was dealt with.
"The Government did not give any decision in relation to a legal strategy. To infer, as Minister Cowen says, that there was a Government legal strategy is factually wrong," they added.