The deputy medical director of the Irish Blood Transfusion Service, Dr Emer Lawlor, returns to the witness-box at the Lindsay tribunal this week when she will answer questions about her treatment of haemophiliacs.
Dr Lawlor, who was a registrar at St James's Hospital, Dublin, in the late 1970s, will be asked about an allegation that she instructed a junior doctor to give a mild haemophiliac an imported clotting agent in 1979 to stop his nose bleed when his medical records noted that he should be given cryoprecipitate, a safer locally-made product.
The patient, John Berry from Athy, Co Kildare, contracted hepatitis C and died last September. He had given evidence to the tribunal in May.
Mr Berry's medical records, when opened to the tribunal in February, showed that a shortage of sterile water to reconstitute cryoprecipitate resulted in his being given the infectious imported clotting agent in the early hours of the morning. The notes said Dr Lawlor had ordered the use of two bottles of Hemofil, a form of factor 8 concentrate manufactured in the US by the Travenol pharmaceutical firm.
Asked about the incident during his evidence, Prof Ian Temperley, former director of the National Haemophilia Treatment Centre, said the bleed occurred "at an inconvenient and very awkward time of day" and it was quite possible the doctor could not find sterile water.
Now a consultant haematologist, Dr Lawlor is expected to be in the witness-box for a number of days. In addition to giving evidence of treatment she was involved with, she will give testimony on the products issued by the Blood Transfusion Service Board to treating hospitals outside Dublin and Cork.
These include Galway's University College Hospital and Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda.
The tribunal, which began in September 1999, is not expected to hear closing submissions before September at the earliest.