Tá mé buíoch as ucht deis chun an cheist seo a ardú ar an Athló. It is little surprise that one of the groups representing victims of the hepatitis C scandal has decided to boycott the Minister's compensation tribunal. The other main group which represents victims who contracted hepatitis C from blood transfusions remains deeply unhappy with the tribunal and has expressed serious dissatisfaction at the Minister for Health's handling of its concerns.
For the past five months the groups representing victims have expressed serious concerns about the Minister's proposals. However, he has failed to listen to them and has instead rail-roaded his ad hoc tribunal. The tribunal is fundamentally flawed and I have argued from the outset that a statutory tribunal is the best way to proceed for numerous reasons. It is becoming apparent that individuals appearing before the ad hoc tribunal will be dissatisfied with the justice they receive.
There are numerous deficiencies with the ad hoc tribunal. For example, the terms under which it is established do not allow victims as a right to have medical oral evidence presented even though hepatitis C can cause many complications and is a potentially life threatening disease. There is not a medical expert on the tribunal to compensate for this. In addition, victims do not have an absolute right to give evidence to the tribunal, witnesses cannot be compelled to attend and while the tribunal can make provisional awards women must accept the ruling of the tribunal to grant a provisional or final award even though hepatitis C is a most uncertain disease and the victim's health can deteriorate considerably over time.
There are numerous other deficiencies with the tribunal. For example, its terms require victims to prove on the balance of probabilities that they contracted hepatitis C through blood transfusions or the administration of anti-D. This onus of proof may be impossible for many legitimate victims to discharge. For example, their records could be lost or the chain of evidence may be impossible to complete because testing for hepatitis C was only introduced after October 1991. There are also difficulties in regard to the way the tribunal was established. The Minister says it will continue indefinitely but there is no guarantee that a future Government will not try to abolish it. There is also no guarantee of a judicial review of decisions, while a constitutional issue surely arises in relation to the ability of one Government to bind future Governments to an ad hoc scheme.
Without doubt, the tribunal fails any reasonable fairness test on many counts. This leads me to believe the terms of the tribunal have been deliberately fashioned so that the State's liability is minimised. The argument put forward by the Attorney General in recent weeks in the High Court that victims of hepatitis C who use an alias should use their own names and addresses so that everyone knows who they are is an attempt by the State to cajole other victims of hepatitis C away from the courts and back into an ad hoc and unsatisfactory tribunal. Given that the State is fully responsible for this scandal — it was a State agency which was at fault — this treatment of the victims is shameful.
The Minister suggested that cases at the tribunal would go through almost on the nod and that victims would be treated fairly. However, the truth appears to be far from this. Victims will run up against all kinds of evidence difficulties and will find that the tribunal does not function in their favour.