Irish people who have threatened to tear up their organ donor card in "sympathy" for Mr Billy Burke, the Kerry man seeking a lung transplant in the UK, have missed the point of the donor system, Mr Mark Murphy, chief executive of the Irish Kidney Association and chairman of the Irish Donor Network, said last night.
He confirmed that the Irish Kidney Association had received up to 15 calls in the last week from people who said they were tearing up their donor cards because they were "very unhappy" with the donor system.
"If we got 15 calls I have to presume there are hundreds of people out there thinking the same thing."
Mr Murphy said he was very worried about some of the "negative reaction" to the campaign. Around 5,000 people marched through Killorglin, Co Kerry, this week urging the Minister for Health to intervene to ensure the cystic fibrosis sufferer gets a lung transplant in the UK.
Mr Murphy said the public seemed to be reacting to the fact that Ireland shared much-needed organs with the UK.
Yet the UK was both genetically and geographically the closest transplant partner for Ireland. He said Ireland did very well out of its relationship with the UK, and for the last two years the UK had performed a total of 247 lung transplants, of which 26 were on Irish patients.
This was well in excess of 10 per cent of transplant operations even though our population represented only 6.6 per cent of the UK population.