NO disciplinary action is recommended against any employee of the Blood Transfusion Service Board in the Report of the Hepatitis C Tribunal of Inquiry, which is to be published today.
Mr Thomas Finlay's report will be presented to the Cabinet this morning by the Minister for Health, Mr Noonan. The 200 page report singles out certain named employees of the board, past and present, for criticism. It details the chronology of events and evaluates decisions taken and responsibility for them, but does not call for the removal of any employees from their positions.
In his closing remarks to the tribunal, Mr John Rogers SC, for Positive Action and the McCole family, said the principal biochemist at the BTSB should no longer be employed in transfusion medicine. There had been "life threatening" breaches of BTSB procedures by Ms Cecily Cunningham when she was in charge of the anti-D manufacturing unit, which. operated at Pelican House from 1970 to 1994, he said.
The Finlay report recommends the setting up of a consumer council on which regular users of blood and blood products would be represented. It criticises the Department of Health for delaying the introduction of the test for hepatitis C until October 1991.
The report is also sharply critical of the "one page" renewal, a retrospective system of licence authorisations for the manufacture of anti D, which gave the impression that the product had authorisation.
Mr Finlay does not recommend that the report be forwarded to the Director of Public Prosecutions as demanded by Mr Rogers on behalf of Positive Action and the McCole family.
Counsel for the tribunal, Mr James Nugent, made it clear at the time that it would "not be appropriate for the tribunal, particularly one headed by a judicial figure, to make any recommendations to the DPP" as this could be seen as "pressure on him to exercise what his statutory function is". However, once the report is in the public domain, the DPP will have an opportunity to assess it.