THE leader of the Progressive Democrats, Ms Mary Harney, has said honesty is her trademark in politics and she will not be dishonest with the electorate.
Addressing a women's fundraising lunch in Dublin yesterday, she referred to the ongoing controversy that her comments generated this week in relation to water charges, saying she has "a firm head" on her shoulders.
Denying she had made a mistake in her comments on Thursday's Morning Ireland programme, Ms Harney said she regarded a "gaffe" as telling a dying woman - Mrs Brigid McCole - that she would be "harried to the Supreme Court". A political gaffe was about a mistake, and not about showing courage and leadership.
She told the gathering she would continue to make what she saw as truthful and honest comment, because this was what the public deserved.
Ms Jane O'Brien, chairwoman of Positive Action, who addressed the lunch, said Mrs McCole's courage had given strength to those campaigning for justice in the hepatitis C scandal. "From early in 1994 the normal trust we, as ordinary women, placed in the institutions in this country was dashed when the antiD tragedy first unfolded. Our turning as a group and as individuals to the institutions of Government and the Department of Health, also yielded little comfort," she said.
Positive Action's executive realised they not only had to talk to politicians, but to the people "who made the backroom decisions".
The climate of public and political opinion about the anti D contamination had changed dramatically in recent months. People now know now potentially deadly virus contaminated a routinely given blood product.
Calling for changes to be made rapidly in the ex gratia compensation scheme, following the release of the report of the Finlay inquiry, Ms O'Brien said the necessary alterations must be made "with speed, before a general election".
"What the recent public inquiry has changed is that the general public, as well as the victims, now have a new insight into how this tragedy occurred and where fault lay. We now know it could have been prevented. The official agenda was to keep the lid on the problem and to pay out money to the victims to make the whole mess go away, Ms O'Brien added.
Ms Harney described the hepatitis C tragedy as the biggest health and political scandal in the history of the State.