Selling blood products is a curious business, as Mr Martin Hynes has found out since he became chief executive of the Blood Transfusion Service Board (BTSB) last June.

The BTSB is a medico-scientific organisation because it is "at the leading edge" of medicine. But as a player in the pharmaceutical industry, it is subject to the standards and procedures of any provider of a medicinal product. But unlike the commercial sector, there is no advantage in demand for blood increasing.

Uniquely dependent on public goodwill for its supply, Mr Hynes is encouraging "best practice", which usually means making hospitals aware that prescribing less transfusions rather than more can be desirable.

"We are actually one of the few people in business, insofar as we are in a business, who are encouraging people to use less of our products," he says.

Working in the shadow of the hepatitis C tribunal and with another tribunal looming which will examine the contamination of blood product supplies, Mr Hynes has inherited a difficult task of restoring the BTSB's reputation.

The blood unit price of £94 is comparable to that of a fine brandy but has infinitely more life-enhancing qualities, he points out.

Meanwhile, the BTSB's budget has increased by 20 per cent to £30 million, reflecting the increased cost of production, involving new and extra testing procedures.

"We cannot afford not to do it, after all that has happened in the blood service, both in Ireland and abroad, and the lessons that have been learnt . . . we must invest in a public service and ensure nothing like that happens again."

Demand for the product increased by 2.5 per cent in 1998 to more than 155,000 units or about 3,000 units per week.

"On the one hand there are far more operations because of improved technology, but on the other hand, for many out services, the blood supply and platelets supply are an essential requirement," he says.

He is in the middle of planning a move to a new £25 million premises at St James's Hospital in October, doing market research into why people donate, and launching a new image and corporate strategy for the blood board.

He has an advertising budget of about £500,000. Because much of the blood collection is based on the mobile clinic service, advertising is, of necessity, taken in local newspapers and radio. "It is not just advertising. It is trying to understand what is the most convenient time to donate," he says. Although a falling off in donor willingness to give blood is easily blamed on the publicity from the tribunal, Mr Hynes also relates it to busier lifestyles. "We are trying to eat into people's free time," he says.

He describes his management approach as "very much participative" and "endeavouring to create a planning environment. I believe that you trust people and they will deliver for you. You set realistic targets for people and they will always come through." From a family of nine in Ballinasloe, Co Galway, he studied in Garbally College, and, in 1962, followed in his father's footsteps by training as a psychiatric nurse. He defends the institutional care of the time, saying that it played its own role when community care supports were lacking.

"Many people who found it difficult to cope in society would have had a much higher quality of life," he says. But he moved into the newly developing community services area shortly after qualifying, progressing onto management level by being promoted to assistant chief nursing officer in 1974.

Having worked for nine years in Castlebar as chief nursing officer in Mayo Psychiatric Services, he moved to the Department of Health in Dublin in 1987 as a psychiatric nursing consultant. In 1989 he was appointed as programme manager for the South Eastern Health Board and found himself working on the notorious Kilkenny incest case.

"It is, again, an issue that was very often in the media spotlight. One of the things that sustained me was the knowledge that it would come to an end."

He has got used to "moving on" and never has a desire to go back to where he lived and worked previously.

Now he commutes from Maynooth, Co Kildare, but has still to join a local bridge club. Working a 12-hour day, he says, he is "probably" a workaholic and recalls a joke from his time in Kilkenny that if he was seen leaving the office at 6.30 p.m, he was said to have been taking a half-day. "By the time I got to the BTSB, I had accumulated a lot of experience of health services at health board level," he points out.

He arrived to inherit "a pre-ordained" programme, part of which had been implemented, but he believes the BTSB was functioning as a "crisis driven" organisation. Over a three-month period it had imported about 2,500 units from the Netherlands.

"There was a lack of momentum, perhaps, in regard to the core business of getting blood in and out of the hospitals," he says.

He immediately began overseeing the move to the new premises, updating the computer system and ensuring it was Year 2000-compliant, and imposing a dictate of no more imports, aiming for the general EU requirement that "each centre would be self-sufficient for voluntary, non-remunerated donors".

"Psychologically it was important for me, important for the organisation and people have coped very well."

The operation is also uniquely complex from a planning perspective. The longest shelf life for the products is 35 days and blood has to be collected at a minimum of a three-month interval while planners keep one eye on holiday periods, adverse weather conditions and such factors as flu epidemics.

Hospitals are already considering their needs for the extra long holiday next Christmas which will be replete with millennium celebrations. It will mean "we are going to have to sit down and plan how we are going to meet the needs of hospitals over the prolonged period". He hopes that the 48 per cent increase in price of the 450 millilitre unit this month - from £63 (#80) to £94 - will make users of the product think again about the product's value.

Although the Government will ultimately pick up the bill for public and voluntary hospitals, private hospitals will be passing the extra cost on directly to their patients. "There is an incentive there for hospitals to watch carefully the blood that they use.

"It is a very valuable product. I do not think people realise how immensely valuable it is."

(# - Euro)