The Travenol pharmaceutical company has not been contacted to establish how much it charged the Blood Transfusion Service Board for products to treat haemophiliacs and therefore the profit margin the deal generated for the BTSB is unknown, the tribunal has been told.
A financial expert hired by the BTSB to review its financial affairs for the tribunal said it was unclear from the board's own documents how much it was charged in the 1970s and 1980s for Travenol products.
However, Mr John McStay speculated that if the board had made a 4p mark-up on the clotting agents when it sold them on to hospitals in 1984, it would have made a gross profit of £118,283.
The tribunal has already heard that the BTSB "warehoused" Travenol products from its headquarters at Pelican House.
In the 1970s, when the board imported Haemofil (a brand of Factor 8 made by Travenol), Travenol suggested in correspondence that it would offer the board a service fee of 10 per cent for distributing the product, on which the board could also make a mark-up when it sold them on to hospitals.
In the mid-1980s, when Travenol agreed to make Factor 8 from Irish plasma shipped to it by the BTSB, it paid the board for the plasma, gave back Factor 8 for free and the board then sold it on to hospitals.
The tribunal has been looking at why the board imported clotting agents made by Travenol when two World in Action programmes screened in 1975 and 1985 cast doubt over whether Baxter Travenol was screening paid donors to its plasma pools. The recipients of products from these pools ended up with HIV and hepatitis C.
When counsel for the Irish Haemophilia Society, Mr Martin Hayden SC, asked Mr McStay why he did not contact Travenol to find out what margins the BTSB was making from selling its products in Ireland, he said: "I can't recall why but the decision was taken not to contact Travenol." He said he had not spoken to former BTSB finance committee members either, as time was limited.