It is a state of the art facility. More important are the things just mentioned by Dr. Lawlor, such as improved tests and donor selection criteria. In terms of exchanging information with other transfusion services, last year countries such as ourselves, which have a national blood donation service made up of voluntary non-remunerated donors, established a European blood alliance which enables us to share information with such countries. That takes place all the time and will improve as time goes by.
We are also investing in a new computer system which will track the donation from the point at which the donor is recruited to the point at which the unit is dispatched to the hospitals. That system has been installed in a number of other European countries and also in New Zealand and Australia. It is due to be finally installed on 4 October 1999. These two additional major capital investments will help us in terms of premises and equipment, in addition to our existing tests.
It will take more time to restore donor confidence. Obviously, there is a great deal of hurt due to what happened. We must take responsibility for bringing the organisation forward into the next century. However, it is important to remember that many people in hospital would die without blood transfusions. There is a balance. It is difficult to get across the message that we have changed. As Dr. Lawlor said, since we introduced these changes there have not been adverse reactions.
There will always be new challenges as new diseases might emerge from a foreign country which we do not know about yet but which will require testing. We are always conscious that the work is not finished yet as there may be more transmissible illnesses and viruses which medical technology and science do not know about yet or have answers to.
However, in terms of restoring public confidence as much as possible, we are endeavouring to put as much information into the public arena as we can. We believe that full disclosure of all the information to the public is the best way to go about this. We have begun a series of regular bulletins for people who use blood in hospitals. We are also preparing regular newsletters for donors to make them aware. We published an annual report last year - one had not been published for a few years because of the other constraints - in which we provided information. The 1998 annual report will be published on Friday this week. Much more information is being given to the public. All we can do is make people fully aware of what we are doing and endeavour to make them aware of the changes we have brought about, which is the critical part. Given the other issues which take place off stage, it is difficult for us to do that.
Mr. Dunne identified earlier in his report the increasing cost to the board of recruiting donors. We have had to spend more money on advertising and communicating with donors. However, in fairness, the response has always been great if we advertise for donors or make an appeal. There is an underlying generosity among the Irish community if they are aware of the need.
We are also required to be self-sufficient. Unfortunately, we had to import blood last year and in previous years. We discontinued that last August and have managed to meet hospital orders since then. We are having reasonable success, although we are regularly concerned that we might not be able to meet hospital demands at holiday periods or if there were an upsurge in demand.
We believe that confidence is being restored at the moment. We have greater communication with hospital clinicians and the people who prescribe and use blood. The vigilance system will increase our communications with hospital clinicians. We are also increasing our communications with donors.