THE Government has decided to establish a new tribunal to examine HIV infection of BTSB blood and blood products, which have affected haemophiliacs and others.
The chairman and personnel of the hepatitis C tribunal may undertake the new investigation. It is understood that Mr Justice Thomas Finlay and staff at the tribunal would only take on the fresh tribunal if its terms of reference were specific and its duration short.
It is understood that the tribunal, when asked, advised strongly against extending its terms of reference to include an examination of the HIV issue.
The Minister for Health, Mr Noonan, yesterday confirmed that, in addition to examining the issue of HIV infection of blood products manufactured and distributed by the Blood Transfusion Services Board, the next tribunal will also investigate matters that may arise from the report of the hepatitis C tribunal.
Details of the terms of reference and membership of the HIV tribunal will not be prepared until the present tribunal has reported around the end of February.
Confirmation of a second tribunal came shortly before the Dail debate on a Fianna Fail private members' motion calling on the Government to widen the terms of reference of the hepatitis C tribunal to deal with the plight of haemophiliacs. However, the Government tabled an amendment setting up another tribunal and this is expected to be passed in the House tonight.
Mr Noonan said it would be neither "proper nor prudent" to delay the publication of the hepatitis C tribunal "into what is the greatest scandal that has occurred in the health services". If all the
Hepatitis C issues had been put into the present investigation, a report would not be forthcoming "for a very long time", he added.
On receipt of the report from Judge Finlay, the Minister said, he intended to draft terms of reference "as acute and specific as the hepatitis C ones" and to establish an inquiry that would work as quickly and efficiently as the present one. However, the preparation work before oral hearings would obviously take longer than the preliminaries of the hepatitis C tribunal.
Meanwhile, Mr Brian O'Mahony, chairman of the Irish, Haemophilia Association, which withdrew from the hepatitis C tribunal in December on the grounds that its difficulties were not being addressed, said there was no guarantee that its concerns would be dealt with in the new inquiry.
In total, 210 of his members had been infected with the hepatitis C virus and three of these had died. Over 100 members had contracted HIV and 58 of these had died. All were infected through products either manufactured or distributed by the BTSB, he said.
The association had pulled out of the tribunal because it was not dealing with "how our members had been infected and why", Mr O'Mahony said.
While his organisation welcomed the establishment of an HIV tribunal, a "problem" arose in relation to how members were infected with the hepatitis C virus.
"If the Minister gave a commitment to finding out about how haemophiliacs were infected with hepatitis C, we would be happy. He acknowledges our concerns so why doesn't he state that he will encapsulate them in the new terms of reference?" he added.
Meanwhile, a Government spokesman said that the special tribunal for haemophiliacs had been under Government consideration for some time and was not a "concession" to the Fianna Fail motion tabled last night.