A major international pharmaceutical firm has been linked with an Irish wholesale company, one of whose directors worked at the Blood Transfusion Service Board.
RTE reported yesterday that Accu-Science, of which the BTSB's former senior technical officer, Mr Sean Hanratty, was a director, acted as a wholesaler for the Cutter company, one of the pharmaceutical firms which supplied products to Pelican House. Cutter is part of the multinational Bayer Group.
The Linsday tribunal, which resumes its public sittings next month, has been investigating possible links between BTSB employees and various pharmaceutical companies with which the board had business dealings.
In 1991, Mr Hanratty was the subject of a detailed report on allegations of a conflict of interest over the supply of products to the BTSB. The unpublished report examined claims that Accu-Science was supplying products to the BTSB at up to twice the price of other companies.
The allegation was made in 1990 by Mr Pat Rabbitte TD, who had complained that neither hardware nor blood packs had been put out to tender by Pelican House. Mr Rabbitte claimed that around £1.5 million was being spent each year on packs which could have been bought on the market at half the price.
It has been further alleged that Mr Hanratty, who died in 1996, may have ordered the destruction of dispatch documentation in 1993, the year he retired from the board. Counsel for the Irish Haemophilia Society, Mr John Trainor SC, told the tribunal that the documentation would have been of crucial importance to haemophiliacs infected with HIV and/or hepatitis C through infected blood products in their cases against pharmaceutical companies.