THE Secretary of the Department of Health, Mr Jerry O'Dwyer, was asked at the tribunal yesterday, how he could say "in any way that the Blood Transfusion Service Board had been given the go ahead to begin hepatitis C testing at a meeting on June 7th, 1991.
Mr O'Dwyer had told the tribunal of inquiry into the hepatitis C scandal a short time earlier that this had happened, and pointed to minutes of BTSB meetings in July and August 1991 as evidence.
When he had been brought through those minutes, he was asked by Mr James Nugent, counsel for the tribunal, "how can say in anyway the BTSB had been given the go ahead by the Department?"
Mr O'Dwyer had been answering questions as to why there had been a three month delay between his Department's decision (on May 29th, 1991) to give the go ahead for the introduction of a hepatitis C screening programme, and this being conveyed to the Blood Transfusion Service Board (on September 3rd, 1991).
He said the BTSB had been informed about the matter at a meeting on June 7th, 1991. That meeting, he agreed, was attended by two officials from the Department of Health, Mr Frank Ahern and Ms Dolores Moran, as well as four BTSB officials including the then BTSB chief executive officer Mr Ted Keyes.
Mr O'Dwyer pointed to minutes from meetings of the BTSB during the summer of 1991 as an indication Pelican House had been told "informally" that approval had been granted for the introduction of the tests, before it was officially informed on September 3rd, 1991. It was "actively making arrangements for the introduction of tests", he said.
However, on being brought through the minutes of the BTSB meeting of July 17th, 1991, by Mr Nugent, Mr O'Dwyer agreed it was "correct" that funding for the tests (implicit in the BTSB's request for approval to introduce them) was then still being sought by Pelican House.
He agreed that minutes for the BTSB meeting of August 28th, 1991 noted efforts by Mr Keyes to arrange a meeting with the Minister on the funding issue.
Having got nowhere with officials," Mr Nugent commented, "they were going to the Minister". Mr O'Dwyer agreed that a letter from Mr Keyes, dated August 16th, 1991, said the BTSB still awaited a decision on testing by the Department.
Ms Moran, then a higher executive officer with the Department of Health, told the tribunal she did not recollect any information about the Department's decision to authorise tests being conveyed to the BTSB at the June 7th meeting.
Mr Keyes, then chief executive officer with the BTSB, said there had been "no suggestion" that the Department had approved the introduction of testing at that meeting.
Mr Thomas McGuinn, chief pharmacist at the Department of Health, told the inquiry there had been no official check on the safety of blood products manufactured by the BTSB between 1970 and 1984, when it operated without a licence. Files he discovered as late as last Tuesday night indicated that, as far back as 1972, not only was the Department of Health aware the 1932 Therapeutic Substances Act applied to the BTSB, but so also were officials at the BTSB.
Mr McGuinn also told the inquiry about the surprise appearance of a "one page renewal", product authorisation document (licence) in an anti D file, at the Department of Health in 1994. When the hepatitis C crisis broke in February 1994 "a lot of questions were being asked" at the Department of Health, he said. He consulted the file on the subject and "noticed the relevant dates and then passed it on to the relevant section (of the Department)".
On April 7th, 1994, he consulted the same file again and "noticed the addition of a new page, a one page renewal form (a retrospective authorisation form)". He was "rather surprised" by this. It "had never happened before." He queried the matter, but got no answers.
He "didn't delve too deeply" as "it was not my business", though he sent a minute on the matter to Mr John Gillen, head of the relevant section.
