I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy O'Shea, to the House and I thank him for taking this Adjournment matter, which is important.
Before last week I was sure that the quality of life for almost 2,000 men, women and children had been severely diminished and, in many cases, destroyed by the incompetence and mis-judgement of the Blood Transfusion Service Board. However, in the light of revelations made last week, this failure of officialdom has been grossly underestimated. The revelations that the woman donor, whose plasma was used for the manufacture of anti-D, was known since 1976 to have infectious hepatitis means that the greatest health scandal ever to occur in this State is even more serious than was previously admitted.
This admission changes everything and raises a number of questions. Why was this information, which was made public by the Minister last week in the other House, not in the report of the expert group on the Blood Transfusion Service Board? The Minister said last week that it was "obvious from the information in the report that the expert group was informed by the Blood Transfusion Service Board that the donor in question was clinically diagnosed as having infectious hepatitis in 1976". The report does not state that donor X had infectious hepatitis. Perhaps the Minister could tell me where this information is given in the report.
I am au fait with the situation as I have followed this saga since February 1994 when it was first disclosed. I read the report again after the Minister's statement in the House last week, particularly those paragraphs which he stated dealt with the infection of the anti-D product with hepatitis C and the paragraphs which analysed the circumstances surrounding the infection. I cannot find evidence in any of those paragraphs that the information revealed last week was contained in the report of the expert group.
I have studied paragraphs 3.13 to 3.16, which mention a patient being jaundiced. Paragraph 3.14 states that the expert group was told that the "BTSB concluded that the jaundice was related to 'environmental factors' ". Paragraph 3.15 refers to six women who developed clinical jaundice in 1977 after receiving anti-D and paragraph 3.16 also mentions clinical jaundice. Infectious hepatitis was not mentioned. Paragraphs 3.33 and 3.34 mention jaundice in late 1976 and clinical jaundice. I cannot find any mention of infectious hepatitis. Paragraph 3.59 mentions a patient who developed jaundice in November 1976 and paragraph 3.60 talks about "jaundice not related to infectious causes". The only place infectious hepatitis is mentioned is in paragraph 3.61 which refers to the policy of the blood bank of not "accepting donor volunteers who have at any time had Infectious Hepatitis or Jaundice of unknown origin. . . ". Paragraphs 3.62 and 3.63, which the Minister mentioned, refer to jaundice of unknown origin, while paragraph 3.63 refers to the donor after she had become jaundiced. The appendix mentions jaundice, clinical jaundice and the fact that the Blood Transfusion Service Bord concluded that environmental factors, not anti-D, were to blame. It also says that the hepatitis C virus may have been related to cases of clinical jaundice in 1977. I cannot find anything which states that the Blood Transfusion Service Board and the expert group were told that this woman had infective hepatitis. Was this information withheld from the expert group? Can the Minister explain why this crucial information was not in the report?
The report clearly states that donor X was stated by the Blood Transfusion Service Board to have had jaundice due to environmental factors. As I said, the only reference to infective hepatitis is in paragraph 3.61 in which the policy of the Blood Transfusion Service Board in accepting donor volunteers is dealt with. The new information places a huge question mark over the status of the report of the expert group, given its failure to include such vital information. It also calls into question the adequacy of the ad hoc tribunal established by the Minister for Health to compensate the victims of this debacle.
The failure of the Minister for Health to acknowledge the seriousness of these recent revelations calls into question his judgment. I believe the Minister has failed to accept responsibility for the actions of the Blood Transfusion Service Board, which knew as far back as 1976 that the plasma it was using came from a donor who was known to have infective hepatitis. As the Minister will know, we are not talking about technicalities but about people whose lives have been thrown into turmoil by hepatitis C. I have met these women, as I sure the Minister has, and I know what they are going through. I believe there was an attempt at a cover up and that this information, but for the courage of one woman, would never have come to light.
The Minister's attempt to suggest that this vital information was already in the public domain is contemptible and it is a further insult to these people who have suffered so much at the hands of this State. The least we can expect is the truth — those affected deserve nothing less. It is wrong to pretend this information was in the expert group's report when clearly it is not. I would like the Minister to admit it is not in the report and that these revelations disclosed last week are new.
