The Minister for Health, Mr Martin, yesterday restated his commitment to an inquiry into the role of international drug companies in supplying contaminated blood products to haemophiliacs.
Mr Martin said he had committed himself to such an inquiry during the election campaign and would be discussing the nature of it with the Irish Haemophilia Society.
However, it is understood that the Government is highly unlikely to take a legal action in the US against such companies as proposed by some activists. A report prepared for the Government earlier this year is believed to have advised that such a case would be very unlikely to succeed.
The Labour Party yesterday called on Mr Martin to publish this report, submitted to the Government last March by Mr Paul Gardiner SC. However, the Government is reluctant to publish it, apparently on the grounds that its negative advice could undermine any prospect of a case.
Mr Martin did not specify yesterday what type of inquiry he had in mind. However, there is speculation that he could take advantage of a change in the law relating to tribunals introduced earlier this year, which allows an inquiry to be carried out by an inspector appointed by a judge, rather than a full and expensive tribunal.
Expressing his desire to see an inquiry, Mr Martin said the "vast majority of the infection emanated from products from the pharmaceutical companies that were imported into this country."
The Irish Haemophilia Society has been campaigning for an inquiry since last year when Judge Alison Lindsay ruled that she was not entitled to conduct one.
The Labour Party's equality spokeswoman, Ms Jan O'Sullivan, also called on Mr Martin to refer the report to the Director of Public Prosecutions despite the tribunal's decision not to do so.
The Director should be asked "to determine if there may have been breaches of the criminal law".
However, Mr Martin said the report was now in the public domain and open to the Director of Public Prosecutions to study. He did not think it was his role to refer it to the DPP, he said.
Ms O'Sullivan said the role of the multinational drug companies must be addressed before there could be "closure" on the issue.
"The Minister should now publish the Gardiner report and outline the steps he proposes to take to ensure that the role of the companies whose products are implicated is fully investigated and the truth established."
Fine Gael's health spokeswoman, Ms Olivia Mitchell, called for investment in "a comprehensive, integrated information technology system for the entire health service" in order to ensure such a tragedy did not happen again.
"The main recommendations of the report, with the exception of a call for an increase in the number of haematologists, focused on the recording and the communications of information," she said.
"Incomplete records, the lack of accessible data and the consequent failure of communication both within the health service and between the service and the public, compounded the disaster which befell haemophilia sufferers."
Only a comprehensive and integrated information technology system would decrease the likelihood of such system failures in the future, she said.