THE Fianna Fail spokeswoman on health, Mrs Maire Geoghegan Quinn, repeated her criticism of the Minister for Health's remarks about the legal action taken by the late Mrs Brigid McCole.
She said that Mr Noonan had tried to present his comments as something out of character and to explain them away by saying that he had not "sensitivity proofed" his speech.
If a Minister came into the House without reading his script, maybe, just maybe, they might able to make an excuse for that Minister. "But I don't believe that a very experienced Minister, and a person regarded as the best performer in the Government, should expect people to believe that he did not read his script before coming into the House."
The Minister's bungling was not just about his remarks on Wednesday night, she said. He had done his best for 18 months to ensure that the whole truth had not emerged. "This was the truth, and the answers, that the victims like the late Mrs McCole wanted more than anything else."
While Positive Action had graciously accepted the Minister's apology, she believed that if the attack brought to the surface a resentment which Mr Noonan had harboured for a long time, she hoped he would accept that it damaged his relations with the victims of hepatitis C.
I think there is a danger now that people will see that the Minister says one thing in public and that he feels something totally different in private. I don't believe that anybody should ever attack Mrs McCole's memory, or her motives, in the fashion in which they were attacked here last night"
While the Minister had belatedly apologised for his remarks, he had not done so until the matter was brought to his attention for the third time in the House.
"I believe that it reflects his attitude to this controversy, that he did not realise that an apology was necessary. I think he believes, as he has from the beginning, that this is all about money. That is why he has said crass things like comparing the situation of a hepatitis C victim to somebody falling into a pothole, or making a comparison with the beef tribunal."
The issue, said Mrs Geoghegan Quinn, was about 1,600 persons or more who were infected with a deadly disease by a State agency for which the Minister ultimately had political responsibility.
She said that the Minister's remark that Mrs McCole could have received a significantly higher award if she went to the compensation tribunal was "very sinister." It begged the question, how did the Minister know that?
Earlier, on the Order of Business, the Fianna Fail leader, air Bertie Ahern, called on the Taoiseach to comment on Mr Noonan's "insensitive remarks" and "his unwarranted attack" on, and subsequent apology to, the McCole family.
The PD spokeswoman on health, Ms Liz O'Donnell, said that a constituent had told her that there was positive proof that the condition of six patients was considered as far back as 1977 to be linked to their receiving anti D. It appeared that the information was passed at the time to the blood bank and the State agency with responsibility for infectious diseases.
"Many of the victims and their families have become so irritated by the bland, meaningless and self serving statements from official quarters that they are themselves making public material from which a picture is beginning to emerge," Ms O'Donnell added.
Mr Alan Dukes (FG, Kildare) said he had listened carefully to Dr Joan Power of the Blood Transfusion Service Board and to its medical director. "It is a great pity that what they said was not brought out a great deal sooner. It illustrated one unfortunate aspect of this matter, that often political considerations have been allowed to obscure the problems and the need for remedies.
Medical practice should finally catch up with the fact that when people were dealing with serious illness, they needed to be given the fullest possible information at the earliest possible moment.