The Government will not establish an inquiry into how up to 90 people here may have died due to infection with contaminated blood products made by US-based companies "for the sake of it", the Tánaiste said today.
Defending the Government's decision not to pursue legal action against the firms involved, Mary Harney said an inquiry into the matter would not be "meaningful" because the facts were already known, and such an exercise would also be very expensive.
Liz McManus, Labour Party
It emerged yesterday that legal advice obtained by the Government, both in the United States and here, indicated that legal action against the pharmaceutical firms would not succeed.
Ms Harney declined to publish the Attorney General's legal advice on the matter, but she said she had made an outline of it available to the Irish Haemophilia Society.
That body said yesterday its members were "angry and dismayed" at the Government's decision not to pursue a case over the contaminated blood products, which infected some of its members with HIV or hepatitis C.
More than 220 haemophiliacs, who have a disorder that prevents their blood clotting properly, were infected with the hep C virus from the blood products. More than 100 were infected with HIV, and to date 91 people have died.
The companies which the State would have pursued if it had taken legal action include Armour/Cutter/Miles, Travenol/Baxter and Immuno International.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Irelandprogramme, the Minister for Health said the legal advice was that action against the firms involved would now be "statute-barred" - outside the legal time frame normally allowed for taking such cases.
"It is today 15 years later. The Irish State became aware at the latest in 1991 and by virtue of the passage of time, which is now 15 years ago, among the legal advice we've got is that it would be statute-barred both in the US and in Ireland," Ms Harney said.
She said the Government had paid a considerable amount of money for the legal advice, but she had capped the amount at €250,000.
"I think not to act on foot of that advice would be dishonest in the extreme. But the advice is very convincing. And . . . in relation to an inquiry, there is nothing we could establish in an inquiry that we don't now know," Ms Harney added.
"We know the facts, we know that a batch of products affected a group of citizens - we don't know which products infected which citizens, that's true. And we could never establish that because we don't have documentation which transpired during the Lindsay tribunal report.
"But we do know a particular batch of products infected a particular group of citizens. And therefore, since we have the chronology of events, there is nothing we could establish by way of an inquiry that we don't now know. And therefore, to say we'll have an inquiry just to put down on record what we already know, I think, wouldn't be a very meaningful exercise and would be a very expensive one indeed," she said.
Asked if it was a satisfactory situation that the US pharmaceutical firms who may have been responsible for the deaths of up to 90 people in Ireland would never be pursued, Ms Harney said: "Of course not. I would love to pursue them because I would love to get back for the taxpayers the money we have spent."
But she went on to say the Government would not pursue action "for the sake of it," adding: "We won't put more money in the way of a legal process that cannot deliver any results."
The Minister for Health said she understood 60 people had individually taken action against the pharmaceutical firms and that there had been "a number of settlements".
The law that applied to individuals was "very different" from the law that applied to the Government in that regard, she said.
But other proceedings taken by states against the companies, and by countries such as Guatemala in relation to tobacco illnesses, had failed, Ms Harney warned.
"This is not without case history. I think we need to be very careful. The Irish Government has compensated the very unfortunate and tragic victims in this case."
Labour Party health spokeswoman Liz McManus said the Government's decision not to pursue the drug companies was "profoundly disappointing".
"Those who have suffered and who have lost loved ones are entitled to truth. It's not sufficient that the taxpayer should shoulder the entire burden when there is clearly responsibility that should be borne by these companies."