The Department of Health and Children played an "active" role in trying to implement the State's policy on self-sufficiency in blood products, it was claimed yesterday.
Mr Michael Kelly, secretary general of the Department, said it worked with the Blood Transfusion Service Board and the National Haemophilia Services Co-ordinating Committee in relation to those aspects of the policy over which it had responsibility.
He said correspondence passed between the Department and the BTSB but seemed to come to an end in July 1981 after the Department requested further information on the blood bank's plans to make intermediate purity Factor 8.
Asked whether the Department ever got a reply to its letter, Mr Kelly said from the documents before him, "it appears not".
Mr Kelly, an executive officer with the Department at the time, said he believed it was active in trying to achieve self-sufficiency and the letter was designed to enable the BTSB "get on with it".
Asked whether any other action was taken by the Department apart from sending this and another letter the previous month, Mr Kelly replied "not that I am aware of".
He stressed, however, ongoing contact was made with the BTSB through a Department official who sat on the agency's board.
He added the "two most committed people in my memory" in the area of addressing the needs of haemophiliacs, were Dr Jack O'Riordan and Prof Ian Temperley.
The Department's belief, he said, was that the BTSB was doing all it could to meet its objective.
Mr Kelly said he wondered what else the Department could have done. The way the matter was followed through probably reflected practice at the Department at the time, he said.
