THE final compensation bill for people who contracted hepatitis C through infected blood products could run to £180 million the Dail Committee on Public Accounts heard yesterday.
The latest estimate of the cost to the State was based on the average payment so far to those who had gone before the Compensation Tribunal. The tribunal had paid out 174 awards totalling nearly £20 million, the committee was told.
The Department of Health accounting officer, Mr Jerry O'Dwyer, said the tribunal had received 1,637 applications, of which 1,489 were sufferers of hepatitis C, 83 were dependants and 65 were carers.
So far 128 lump sum payments had been made and the other 46 were provisional awards, bringing the total payments to £19.7 million. The average payment was £113,224, ranging from £15,200 to £453,904.
Mr O'Dwyer told the committee that none of the awards offered had been rejected by the claimants. Legal costs of £390,272 had been incurred in 30 cases, averaging £13,000 per case.
The likely overall cost of compensation was raised when Mr Michael Finucane (FG) asked if it could be estimated at £180 million, based on the average award being paid at present.
Mr O'Dwyer said he could not disagree with the estimate.
The principal officer told Mr John Ellis (FF) that it was not appropriate to identify any individual in the Department who could have decided to take the case of Mrs Brigid McCole to court. Mrs McCole died after being infected with the hepatitis.
He said it would be early next year before the costs in that case could be finalised.
After the meeting Mr Des O'Malley (PD) said the Government had allocated supplementary estimates of £60 million for compensation at the end of last year, to ensure that expenditure for this year was registered in last year's accounts.
"They have started to make pay outs this year, but for political reasons they wanted to do it this way to allow them to increase expenditure in other areas," he said.