The senior Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS) official widely credited with exposing the hepatitis C scandal has suggested she is being "targeted" and "marginalised" because she acted as whistleblower in the affair.
Dr Joan Power, IBTS regional director for Cork, said her professional experience over the past few years had been "an absolute nightmare", and she believed it was related to her role in the hepatitis C scandal.
While she has been praised for exposing the extent of the scandal, Dr Power has also been criticised for failing, in the early 1990s, to immediately inform blood donors who tested positive for hepatitis C of their test results.
The Minister for Health, Mr Martin, recently announced a fresh inquiry into how 28 Munster donors were not immediately informed of such positive results.
Speaking on RTÉ's Prime Time last night, Dr Power said she welcomed the inquiry but said it needed to focus on "the broader picture" as well.
She claimed that after the Finlay tribunal, before which she admitted she made a mistake in not immediately informing donors of test results, "an official of the Department of Health told a senior colleague of mine that they had me on this issue . . . I was clearly told I would be buried on this issue."
Asked whether she felt she was being targeted because of her role as whistleblower, she replied: "I can find no other reason."
Dr Power was suspended last June only to be reinstated a week later amid contradictory reports over the level of co-operation she had given to her employers in relation to the inquiry.
She denied a claim that she refused to give the names and addresses of the relevant donors to an IBTS official last May, saying: "I said I was happy to give them but I wanted to sit down and discuss the issue . . . There is no evidence whatsoever of not being co-operative."
Dr Power expressed her regret at not having informed donors immediately of test results.
In hindsight, she added, it might have been better to communicate this delay in informing donors by phoning them in person rather than communicating through the lawyers of victims' representative groups.
"I would certainly say I have made mistakes. Which of us hasn't?
"But my current concern is that we have to look back at the immaturity of the system where, after finding this problem, there appears to have been a targeting, and I would question that."
