A new rift has developed between the Dublin and Cork centres of the Irish Blood Transfusion Service. It follows the chief executive officer's complaint to a board meeting that Cork staff had failed to attend a "very important briefing" on variant CJD.
The CEO, Mr Martin Hynes, said he went to Cork last December to update staff on vCJD but no laboratory staff turned up. He said the briefing had been organised by his office and staff in Cork were informed by e-mail.
This report to the January meeting, which is recorded in minutes released under the Freedom of Information Act, has angered laboratory staff in Cork.
Their union, the Medical Laboratory Scientists' Association, said staff were annoyed at the comment in the minutes that they did not attend the briefing "for some inexplicable reason", suggesting they did not care about CJD.
Ms Helen Franklin, secretary of the union, said nothing could be further from the truth.
She said the national medical director of the IBTS, Dr William Murphy, had been in the Cork centre a couple of days before the CEO, and he had brought the Cork chief technical officer (CTO) up to speed on vCJD. The CTO had in turn fully briefed his own staff.
"In addition, there had been very short notice of the CEO's visit and pressure of work in the laboratory meant there was nobody available to attend the CEO's briefing. There were also interviews going on that day," she said.
Tension between the two centres was already high because of IBTS plans to centralise testing of blood donations in Dublin.
A separate row over a decision to instruct the Cork CTO to report directly to Dublin rather than the director of the Cork centre was referred to the Labour Relations Commission in January. Talks began at the LRC on Thursday.