I had hoped that the Minister, Deputy Martin, would be present for this matter. I did not raise it to embarrass him or the IBTS or because I wanted heads to roll, but this issue is too important and worrying to ignore. When one hears, albeit some time after the event, that the new revamped and renamed IBTS had written to people whom it had previously infected with hepatitis C inviting them to donate blood, it makes one's hair stand on end. What does it take to bring home to people in the IBTS, the Minister and all involved the enormity of what happened?
It is almost 20 years ago since the chain of events was set in place. Despite all that has happened, deaths, ongoing debilitating illnesses, the enormous and incalculable impact it has had on the extended families, the ongoing enormous cost to the taxpayer and the burden on the health services, little has changed. One would have imagined that unassailable, cast iron safeguards would have been put in place to prevent even the remotest chance of infected persons donating blood, much less of them being invited to give blood by the very service that previously infected them. I cannot even begin to imagine the insult and hurt this must have caused to the people to whom the IBTS wrote.
From a public health point of view the main concern is the continuous undermining of confidence in the blood collection, treatment and distribution service. It was always going to be difficult for the IBTS to recover from what had happened, starting in the 1980s and continuing up to very recently. It was always going to be difficult to recover from the scandal of distributing contaminated blood and re-establish any kind of confidence in the service and the integrity of its blood products. It will always live in the shadow of what happened. It would be absolutely unforgivable and create an irretrievable situation for the IBTS if there was to be another accident. It has not really dawned on it that it must be absolutely above reproach. That is what it has failed to grasp.
It is not good enough for the IBTS to tell us that if people infected with hepatitis C had come to donate blood, it would have been detected later on. I am sure it would but 20 years on from the original scandals it leaves me almost speechless that it would be even talking about updating records at this stage. With its record, it has to be above reproach. What is most disturbing is that it does not seem to have grasped this.
During the course of a previous discussion on the Lindsay report the Minister for Health and Children assured us, rightly, of big changes that had taken place in investment and in terms of a new culture of accountability. Where is the proof of this? Is the Minister monitoring the situation and ensuring these changes are taking place? If so, how can this happen again? The report of the Lindsay tribunal has been much criticised but its recommendations were the one solid thing to come out of the process. They rightly identified that this was not a case of individual culpability but a systems failure. There was a failure on the part of management to create clear lines of responsibility in reporting; a failure to provide for information systems, data and good record keeping, the ability to look back at what had happened and relate it to what was happening; and a failure of communications. These mistakes are still been made. Have the systems changed?
It is not good enough for the Minister for Health and Children to offer us what now seems like a glib assurance – I do not think it was his intention to be glib – that everything has changed. It clearly has not changed. As far as the IBTS is concerned, nothing can be taken for granted. I just want the Minister for Health and Children to take a more personal interest in monitoring what is going on and ensuring the process of change is proceeding, rather than simply being reported as happening.