A former Blood Transfusion Service Board employee said yesterday she deeply regretted the infection of blood products used to treat haemophiliacs.
Ms Cecily Cunningham, who was the board's principal biochemist, said she was "deeply troubled and profoundly saddened by all the pain and tragedy" suffered by haemophiliacs.
Coming close to tears as she read from her statement to the tribunal, she said no words could adequately express her sympathy to those who became infected and their families.
The tribunal has heard that more than 220 haemophiliacs were infected with HIV and/or hepatitis C from contaminated blood products in the State during the 1970s and 1980s.
Ms Cunningham, the person in the BTSB who eventually heat-treated clotting agents to kill viruses they carried, said the first time she knew seven haemophiliacs in the State had contracted HIV from BTSB-made factor 9 clotting agent was when the tribunal began. She had thought the infections were all related to imported clotting agents.
She said she became aware of how difficult life could be for haemophiliacs when she attended the a.g.m. of the Irish Haemophilia Society in 1984. She referred to their suffering and how they could be crippled. She said she had a number of concerns after attending the IHS meeting as a member of the public and spoke to Mr Sean Hanratty, her superior, about them.
"He said I was taking too much worry on myself and that I shouldn't really become emotionally involved with the haemophiliacs, that our duty in the blood bank was to make available products to alleviate their condition," she said.
Ms Cunningham said she spent several months training in each department of the blood bank and settled in the fractionation department, becoming principal biochemist in 1975.
Mr John Cann was her superior, with Mr Hanratty his deputy. She was not responsible for policy decisions and had no say in the selection of blood products for haemophiliacs, she said.
Ms Cunningham was asked about a project which began at Pelican House in the early 1980s to make an intermediate factor 8 product to replace imported concentrates and why it never succeeded. Ms Cunningham said heparin was used to make it and she believed Prof Ian Temperley, former director of the National Haemophilia Treatment Centre, did not want this for his patients.