AN INQUIRY is to be held into the HIV blood contamination controversy, the Minister for Health told the House.

Mr Noonan said the terms of reference would be put before the Dail at the end of January, when the interim report of the Hepatitis C Tribunal would be to hand.

He would explore the feasibility of either extending the existing terms of reference of the tribunal, or setting up an additional, related inquiry to deal with HIV infection and how the problem was handled by the Blood Transfusion Service Board (BTSB).

He said it was very important that neither himself, nor the House, should presume upon the willingness of any particular persons to conduct a further inquiry into a different, though related, matter. Any new questions would involve getting new documents and statements, which would involve further time and effort of unknown dimensions.

The Minister announced he was setting up an optional HIV testing programme, beginning in January, for blood transfusion and blood product recipients from the beginning of 1981 to October 1985.

Replying to a series of questions, Mr Noonan said the BTSB's chief medical consultant had written to the Department's chief medical officer outlining the action taken following the identification of a donor who tested HIV positive. The letter was at that stage brought to the attention of the other relevant senior Department officers by the chief medical officer. And it had been brought to his attention on last Friday.

"I feel that the BTSB should have informed me and my Department in advance of the arrangements which they intended to put in place to trace the recipients of the potentially infected blood issues. However, I accept that the management of the BTSB acted in good faith and saw valid reasons for proceeding in the manner in which they did."

During sharp exchanges with the Opposition, he strongly rejected the PD call to have the BTSB abolished, describing it as "blindingly unfair". To call for its abolition in circumstances where it was the only blood supplier in the State, was "a piece of ridiculous populism". It would be more realistic to call for the abolition of the ESB, he added. "That is about the level of logic."

The PD spokeswoman on health, Ms Liz O'Donnell, said the Minister had answered questions on possible HIV infection of blood when a Dail committee had debated the Department of Health estimate on last Thursday. She asked if his Department officials had made him aware then of the letter of April 16th, 1993.

Mr Noonan said that he had given the information he had at the time, which was effectively an update on what he had told the Dail on the previous Tuesday. He had also made a commitment to come back into the House and tell everything that he knew. He was shown the letter on Friday.

The Fianna Fail spokeswoman on health, Mrs Maire Geoghegan-Quinn, said that when a major scandal erupted in a Department the office-holder ensured the flow of information was cleared in a specific way and guidelines laid down.

"You are the one whose head is on the block in this House and with the public outside. It seems to be, Minister, that there is no communication between your officials and yourself. So how would we expect communication between the board and your officials?"

She asked how the Minister could explain that his officials did not bring what anybody would consider basic information to his attention. "We are talking about people's lives. We are talking about you, as Minister, being accountable during your tenure in the Department."

Mr Noonan said that on Thursday he had given a normal Estimates speech and had not dealt with HIV or hepatitis C. When those issues were raised he had answered the questions as fully as he could. Regarding HIV and hepatitis C, he did not have the relevant officials with him. "I had the financial people with me ... you cannot bring every official in the Department to an estimates debate." He denied it was incompetence.

Ms O'Donnell said the Minister was evolving a new excuse to add to the Taoiseach's one, - that he was not asked the right question. The Minister was saying he did not have the right official with him when asked a question.

Earlier, Mr Noonan rounded on the Opposition, saying he did not understand how the deputies who had addressed themselves to the issue seemed to have avoided the main point: why no lookback programme took place in 1985 to 1989 or subsequently.

Addressing Mrs Geoghegan Quinn, he said: "You had colleagues as ministers for health right through from `87 to `94 ... two of your colleagues who were medical doctors were in the Department at that time, your deputy leader was in the Department at that time. But you are asking me to explain why nothing was done until I became Minister."

He recalled that the 1989 election had been caused by the failure of the government of the day to give haemophiliacs any compensation. The next government was an FF-PD coalition. How had there not been a review at that time of HIV infection in the blood supply?

"I am not going to stand up here and be lectured on probity by anybody on the other side of the House when you had better opportunities nearer to the event to deal with these matters."

Mr Noonan said he would come to the House in January and present the terms of reference of an inquiry. "We are not going to debate simply Michael Noonan's tenure in the Department of Health. We are going to debate it all, from 1980."

Ms O'Donnell said the performance of a board which had been in situ during Mr Noonan's term of office raised a political question. Did it inspire public confidence in the blood supply when, in the space of a week, he had had to come into the House on three occasions. There was the board's failure to inform his Department and this summer the board investigated the matter, sending a "cryptic" and "misleading" letter to 45 hospitals.

Until last Friday the Department was saying it was first informed of HIV contamination last week. "Does it inspire public confidence that the Minister for Health is permanently red faced, being a permanent apologist both for the previous board and the current board?"

She said the board, which was meant to represent a fresh start, was now taking up where the outgoing board left off, in terms of lack of accountability, secret operations and failing to keep the Minister informed on crucial matters.

Mr Noonan said he had already stated it would have been better if the BTSB had informed him at the start of the lookback process. "They say that they were trying to follow the trail to identify the actual risk before they would report to the Department of Health and the Minister. That is a tenable explanation, but I would, prefer if they had informed me."

Asked by Mrs Geoghegan-Quinn what the reaction of the board's chief executive had been when the Minister put this to him, Mr Noonan replied: "He said that, on consideration, maybe he should.

"But then he explained to me why he was going to report at the end of the process, when he knew there would still be a residual problem because the records were bad. And rather than presenting the opening position, he decided he was going to go through the process and present the position at the nett point. And we are getting to the nett point now.

The issue related to what happened between 1980 and 1985, Mr Noonan said. "There was many a minister, there was many a board, there was a political appointment to the board right through that period." It was particularly unfair that the first management group to address the issue should be dumped on.

Mrs Geoghegan-Quinn asked Mr Noonan what process of communication existed between the board, the Department and the Minister.

Mr Noonan said there was "regular, ongoing and constant" communication between the Department and the BTSB. He had delegated communications to the secretary of the Department. There was an assistant secretary with particularly responsibility for it.

He met the chief executive, or the chief medical officer, or indeed the chairman of the board, when he thought it was appropriate to do so. An official of the Department went to assist the chief executive, Mr Liam Dunbar, for a period.

The Minister said the Kilkenny health worker was one of the persons who had tested positive. There was an elderly man in the north-west who had received blood and was being tested. There was a person in the west, now deceased, who had received blood during his terminal illness.

A man in the midlands had gone to hospital, received blood, and he died, several years later, as an elderly man. A Dublin man who had received blood died at 69 years. There was another person in the west who was being tested. THE Minister for Health, Mr Noonan, said in the Dail yesterday he expects to have an interim report from the tribunal of inquiry into the hepatitis C scandal "during the Christmas recess". Informed sources indicated yesterday that the tribunal chairman, Mr Justice Finlay, is already working on the report and that it should be with Mr Noonan before Christmas. The tribunal adjourned yesterday and will begin hearing evidence again on Monday, January 13th.