A hospital in Manchester yesterday denied it ever said it would only carry out a lung transplant on a 29-year-old Kerryman if the organs for the operation came from an Irish donor.
A spokeswoman for Wythenshawe Hospital said Mr Billy Burke from Killorglin was on the hospital's waiting list for a double lung transplant and he would be treated in the same way as all other patients on the waiting list for lung transplants at the hospital. There are 35 people waiting at present.
Around 5,000 people marched through Killorglin yesterday, urging the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, to intervene to ensure Mr Burke gets a lung transplant. Mr Burke, a cystic fibrosis sufferer, claims a transplant is his only hope of survival.
Ms Caroline Johnson, press and public relations manager for the Manchester hospital, said it was never a condition of Mr Burke's treatment that he would have to get lungs from an Irish donor.
"That is not true," she said."The most important fact in determining if a patient is transplanted is finding an organ that is compatible with the patient, and then after matching blood groups and so on, making sure it goes to the patient in greatest need," she said.
Mr Burke was on a waiting list for a transplant at the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle for 2½ years when, for medical reasons, he was refused a transplant last year.
He sought a second opinion last summer from the Manchester hospital and it found him to be suitable for transplantation.
Mr Burke has said in recent days that the operation would only proceed in Manchester if he could get lungs from an Irish donor.
However, the Newcastle hospital has exclusive access to Irish donor lungs as it transplants the bulk of Irish patients. Mr Burke said that since the Newcastle hospital would not release lungs from an Irish donor, he believed he had no hope of a transplant.
Ms Lisa Burke, a sister of Mr Burke, said yesterday's statement from the Manchester hospital was news to her family.
"I don't know how right that is, or why we weren't informed," she said. She added that it was "brilliant" if Manchester had her brother on its transplant waiting list and if he had equal priority to other patients on the list. She was sceptical about him getting equal priority.
At the Killorglin rally yesterday, the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Mr O'Donoghue, said the Government was doing everything possible to help arrange a transplant operation for Mr Burke. He said he wished he could guarantee everything would be "all right" for Mr Burke, but he could not.
Some 55,000 signatures have been collected in the area in support of Mr Burke's plea.
Speaking at his home last evening, Mr Burke said he had been buoyed up by the rally. "I feel over the moon. It's really lifted a weight off my shoulders that there's that much support, that I am not going to be left to fight this on my own."