Judge Alison Lindsay's report was lambasted by politicians and the media, writes Joe Humphreys
If there weren't enough reasons for the Government to move away from the tribunal model of investigating matters of public importance, the letter from Judge Alison Lindsay to the Attorney General provides another.
The tribunal she chaired into the infection of haemophiliacs with contaminated blood products has satisfied no one. Not the haemophiliacs, who regard her report as weak and limited in scope. Not the Department of Finance, which has balked at the legal fees involved. And not the chairwoman herself, who feels bruised by the whole affair.
Her principle charge of "vindictive criticism" is without a specific target but her letter of November 2002 - just two months after her report was published - cites political and media commentary.
Of particular annoyance to Judge Lindsay appears to be comments made in the Dáil in October 2002, a month before she wrote her letter of complaint. In a debate on her report, Opposition parties questioned the merits of the tribunal and asked whether it had done more harm than good.
Labour's spokeswoman on health, Ms Liz McManus, said the tribunal had been set up in "good faith" with the aim of bringing some closure and comfort to victims and finding out who was responsible for the infections. "Neither aim has been realised. The report does not come to clear conclusions . . . The outcome is a crime that has many victims and yet no perpetrators."
The views were echoed by Fine Gael's health spokeswoman Ms Olivia Mitchell, who said "the real travesty of the report" was that instead of being a "truth commission" it was a negative experience for the haemophiliac community.
"The adversarial nature of the tribunal left them with the sense that they were the defendants rather than the victims," she said.
Such reactions contrasted sharply with the widespread praise heaped on Mr Justice Flood just weeks earlier when he published his second interim report.
There was also some media criticism of Judge Lindsay's report. Its sometimes indirect language was remarked on, as was the absence of a "conclusions" section. Her report contrasted starkly with that of the 1997 Finlay tribunal into the infection of women with hepatitis C through Anti-D.
The earlier inquiry sat for just two months and reported within five weeks of finishing. In contrast, the Lindsay tribunal ran for two years and took a further 10 months to report.
The starkest contrast, however, was in content. While Finlay pinpointed a number of individuals to blame, Lindsay spoke of a terrible tragedy occurring but not a terrible wrong.
The chairwoman declined even to address claims of Irish Haemophilia Society's lawyers that doctors were guilty of "gross negligence".
The society in turn accused her of leaving questions unanswered, and of couching findings in ambiguous terms. A further charge was that she was less willing to drag parties through the courts to obtain the truth as, for instance, Mr Justice Feargus Flood at the planning tribunal.
On the role of pharmaceutical companies in the affair, the chairwoman argued that her terms of reference prevented her from bringing them into the inquiry. The IHS, however, disagreed.
Whatever about the merits of Judge's Lindsay's complaints about the criticism of the report, her swipe at the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, for not defending it will seem puzzling to some - given his Department was one of the agencies under investigation and, indeed, criticised in parts of her findings.