THE CHARGES against the former principal biochemist in the Blood Transfusion Service Board relating to the infection of women with hepatitis C have been dropped by the State at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.
Cecily Cunningham (66), Hollybrook Road, Clontarf, Dublin, had previously lost a High Court attempt to stop her trial going ahead on the charges which had arisen from alleged contaminated blood products affecting seven women.
She appealed to the Supreme Court which put a stay on her trial pending the outcome of a judicial review.
Shane Murphy SC, for the Director of Public Prosecutions, told Judge Katherine Delahunt that the State was withdrawing all charges against Ms Cunningham.
Judge Delahunt discharged Ms Cunningham from the court and set a date next month for a hearing on the issue of costs.
Judge Delahunt had been told previously that the trial could have continued for four weeks. “Witnesses are ill and we are anxious to avoid delays,” Mr Murphy said then.
The only other person charged in connection with the hepatitis C saga was Dr Terry Walsh, formerly assistant national director with the BTSB, but these proceedings collapsed on his death.
Mr Justice Liam McKechnie in his High Court decision published on July 7th, 2007, found that while what he called an “inordinate and inexcusable” delay on the DPP’s part in processing the case breached Ms Cunningham’s constitutional right to a speedy trial, there was “a far superior” and “paramount” right of the public to have the charges prosecuted.
Mr Justice McKechnie described the Garda investigation into the hepatitis C saga as “exemplary” and stressed that there was no fault on the part of the Garda for the delay.
Paul Anthony McDermott, for the DPP, applied in the High Court for the costs of the case but this was resisted by counsel for Ms Cunningham on the basis that the judge had found there was blameworthy prosecutorial delay.
Mr Justice McKechnie made no order for costs at that hearing.
Ms Cunningham was in court for the High Court decision as were several members of the campaign group Positive Action. One woman was in tears after judgment was delivered.
Ms Cunningham claimed in her failed High Court application that the information on which the charges were brought against her was known to the DPP from the publication in March 1997 of the Finlay report into the hepatitis C saga.
The Garda report arising out of the following investigation was sent to the DPP in October 1999 and Ms Cunningham was charged in 2003.