Executives of blood service accused of misleading Oireachtas

The leader of a research team that uncovered the hepatitis C scandal involving the infection of up to 1,000 women in Ireland …

The leader of a research team that uncovered the hepatitis C scandal involving the infection of up to 1,000 women in Ireland yesterday accused senior executives of the Irish Blood Transfusion Service of misleading the Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children.

Dr Jane Power, consultant haematologist and regional director of the IBTS's Munster centre, said its board chairwoman, Dr Patricia Barker, its CEO, Mr Martin Hynes, and the national medical director, Dr Willy Murphy, "inadvertently or otherwise" misled the Oireachtas committee last year while it considered if the blood transfusion service was correct in its decision to centralise the testing of blood donations.

The allegations were considered yesterday at another meeting of the committee, chaired by Mr Batt O'Keeffe. As a result of the Munster centre's discovery of the "disastrous contamination of Anti D immunoglobulin by the hepatitis C virus", Dr Power said, "a major burden of duty devolved to the the board of the IBTS" to ensure that "lost status and user confidence" were regained.

"Where openness, transparency, accountability, inclusiveness and healthy self-criticism were not only desirable but absolutely essential, the reality has been quite the reverse" from the Munster centre's perspective, she said.

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Pressed by the committee chairman, Dr Power agreed her specific allegations did not include Dr Murphy, the national medical director.

She said the decision to centralise donation blood-testing and remove the service from Cork was a fait accompli before the board meeting in July 1999, where it was formally ratified.

"Over six months before the board decided to address the issue of single-site testing, in March 1999, the national medical director and the CEO of the IBTS informed the head of the Cork laboratory of their their decision to centralise testing," she said.

Shortly afterwards the CEO said in a letter to Dr Power that the purpose of a review he had initiated was "to examine the option of having one test centre".

Dr Barker, the board chairwoman, apologised to the committee if she had given the impression at the previous hearing that she had been "part and parcel of the decision-making process", as Mr O'Keeffe put it.

She had been speaking in the context that the decision had been made before the July 14th, 1999, "critical meeting" of the board. She was appointed chairwoman only from April. She rejected the allegation that a "prior decision" was presented to that meeting and was simply "rubber-stamped' by the board.

Mr Hynes, the CEO, also rejected Dr Power's allegations, while admitting he had told staff at the centre in Cork on July 9th that a recommendation was going to the board, based on the findings of a report compiled by Dr Murphy and himself.

He, too, apologised if the committee had been misled by his previous evidence. Whatever interpretation might have been put on his words the ultimate decision was a matter for the board, he emphasised.

Dr Barker insisted that the review which the board ordered Dr Murphy and the CEO to undertake to determine "best international practice" was entirely independent and objective and complied with the highest standards.

Mr Gay Mitchell TD accused both sides of "self-serving, the whole lot of you" and said the public was not well served by its blood transfusion service. "I feel I'm being used in a dispute between two sides," he told the meeting.

In an effort to resolve the divisive debate the IBTS board on Wednesday decided to accept a recommendation from the CEO, Mr Hynes, and national medical director, Dr Murphy, to invite the Southern Health Board to nominate an international blood transfusion expert to a three member panel.

The panel is to give an independent opinion on the IBTS's decision to centralise testing. One member is to be nominated by the IBTS, one by the SHB, and the third will be agreed between the two nominees.