POSITIVE Action, representing 700 women infected with Hepatitis C through contaminated blood products, has rejected the Minister for Health's "unsatisfactory" statement on the matter.

Mr Noonan told the Dail yesterday an inquiry into the contamination was "fully informed and fully aware" that a woman donor, whose contaminated plasma was used to produce batches of Anti D immunoglobulin, was diagnosed with infective hepatitis in 1976.

These batches infected people with hepatitis C between 1977 and 1991.

But Positive Action maintains the report, published last year, shows it had not been told by the Blood Transfusion Service Board that the donor had been clinically diagnosed as having "infective hepatitis".