The State's failure to properly regulate the licensing of blood products in the 1980s rests with former ministers for health rather than the National Drugs Advisory Board, counsel for the Irish Haemophilia Society said.
Mr Martin Hayden SC said the NDAB suffered from underfunding and a workload which greatly exceeded its resources.
This resulted in a "completely ineffective" licensing regime and for this, the minister for health, as the licensing authority, bore responsibility, said Mr Hayden.
Recommending the establishment of an independent product-testing laboratory, Mr Hayden said under-resourcing of a regulatory agency like the NDAB was fraught with danger as unscrupulous companies might dump unsafe products in the State.
He said funding of a body like the NDAB should be treated as a priority, "not a luxury".
A more active licensing regime in the 1980s might have reduced the number of HIV and hepatitis C infections, he noted.
Moving to the issue of the 1991 "no fault" settlement between the State and haemophiliacs infected with HIV, Mr Hayden said "a code of silence" within the Department of Health regarding the BTSB's role in the infections allowed the State adopt a position against its own citizens.
Department officials "joined in a corruption of the truth" which allowed it take an "unjustified" position in respect of the State's responsibility for the tragedy.
Later, Mr Hayden submitted that Prof Ian Temperley participated in the withholding of information from haemophiliacs by failing to divulge his knowledge about the factor 9 infections to the patients involved.
Mr Hayden noted that Prof Temperley, who was a fellow defendant in the legal action by haemophiliacs against the State, did not commit his knowledge on the matter to record until 1997 in preparation for this tribunal.
