Acrimonious claims and counter-claims have been made by the Minister for Health, Mr Cowen, and his predecessor, Mr Michael Noonan, in the intensifying dispute over the legal strategy adopted in the case of the late Mrs Bridget McCole. Mr Cowen told The Irish Times yesterday that he "accepts" Mr Noonan's assertion that he did not see, in advance, a letter from the Blood Transfusion Service Board to Mrs McCole's solicitors warning that if she sought aggravated damages and lost, costs would be sought.
However, he insisted that Mr Noonan was "certainly briefed about the import of the letter . . . he knew of its existence and he knew the BTSB was going to send it". Mr Noonan was certainly given "oral advice" the day before the letter was sent to Mrs McCole's lawyers, he added.
"If he is saying he did not see the letter, I accept that. But, the substance remains the same. I examined the legal documents; I did not conduct a tribunal of inquiry, and from the documents, it was a reasonable inference to make (that Mr Noonan saw the letter in advance)," the Minister added.
In an angry response to the Minister's claims, Mr Noonan called on him to "immediately apologise to me" since he had "backed down on the false allegations he made on Friday last", that he had seen, approved and failed to amend the letter to the solicitors acting for Mrs McCole.
It was not "good enough now" for Mr Cowen to say he accepted his word. There was nothing in the report by Ms Fidelma Macken SC, who examined the legal documentation in the McCole case, to justify the Minister's claim, he said.
"It is difficult to understand how Mr Cowen could have made the allegations which he made and puts a serious question mark over his judgement and how he runs the Department of Health . . . The claims made by Mr Cowen have been the basis for a series of very damaging attacks on me right across the media since Friday," he added.
Calling for a "formal public apology", Mr Noonan said that he was glad Mr Cowen had "also backed down on his claims that the State was in a position to call the shots and arrange an early solution to the problem".
He was also pleased that the Minister "now agrees" with the conclusions of Ms Macken, that the BTSB was not under his control or answerable to him. Ms Macken said, in her report, that for the State to direct how the case would be run could leave everyone unstuck.
But, Mr Cowen retorted that he had never said his predecessor should "direct" the BTSB. He had, instead, said that Mr Noonan had "many opportunities to communicate to the BTSB the State's view of its position on liability" but had failed to do so. He could have done this without "improperly interfering" in the BTSB's conduct of its defence.
"The State was the paymaster. This was not a case of two totally unassociated defendants. We were the ultimate paymaster and there was nothing improper about communicating the State's assessment on the question of liability," the Minister said.
Adding that it was "nonsense" to claim he was trying to "politically assassinate" his predecessor, Mr Cowen said he had not been "exonerated" by Ms Macken's report since she had "just set out the facts and does not make judgment".
"The fundamental flaw was that the admission of liability was as important to the victims as the monetary compensation."