The organisation overseeing organ donation and transplantation in the UK said yesterday it wished to make clear that decisions about which patients received transplants there were based entirely on clinical grounds.
Reacting to controversy over the Billy Burke case, the chief executive of NHS UK Transplant, Ms Sue Sutherland, said: "Irish lungs do not go exclusively to Irish patients any more than English lungs go exclusively to English patients. The choice of recipient is solely based on clinical parameters."
Her comments came a day after Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester confirmed that Mr Burke, the 29-year-old cystic fibrosis sufferer from Killorglin, Co Kerry, was on its waiting list for a double lung transplant and that the operation was not dependent on him getting organs from an Irish donor. Mr Burke's family said they were told the operation would only be carried out if lungs were donated by an Irish person.
As all lungs donated in the Republic go to the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle in the UK, which said Mr Burke was too ill to transplant, he had no hope of having a life-saving transplant, they believed. Ms Sutherland said there were six centres in the UK undertaking lung transplants, each with its own zone from which it could retrieve organs.
The Newcastle centre has a contract with the Republic to perform lung transplants for its citizens and in return the Republic is part of its retrieval zone. "When lungs are donated and retrieved by a centre, they are then allocated to the most appropriate recipient on the list," she added.
She said there was still a chronic shortage of organs for transplantation.
Meanwhile the Burke family were upset last night after hearing the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, say he could not intervene to speed up a transplant for Mr Burke.