The Minister for Health, Mr Martin, will this week receive a letter declaring no confidence in the Irish Blood Transfusion Service and calling for the resignation of its board members. The letter has been signed by more than 100 doctors in Munster, many of them senior consultants.
The move marks a serious escalation in the dispute between the service and the medical profession in Munster, which has been campaigning for the retention of the IBTS's Munster regional centre for blood testing at St Finbarr's Hospital, Cork.
Under proposals from the blood service, the testing function of the Cork centre would be moved to Dublin in line with plans to centralise blood testing on a national scale.
Last week, Mr Martin met concerned Cork doctors, but was unable to offer them any reassurance. Following the meeting, the service issued a statement saying it was preparing to go ahead with its plans.
Mr William Murphy, national medical director of the IBTS, said yesterday he regretted the doctors' action in declaring no confidence in the service without contacting him to discuss the matter. "But I think it's only fair not to comment until I have seen the full text of the letter," he added.
The service said that as well as administration, the quality control laboratory would continue to operate in Cork. There was also a proposal to develop a tissue-engineering facility there. Testing for viruses in blood was being removed to Dublin because more sophisticated facilities were available and because the move would lead to overall efficiencies.
The discovery by Dr Joan Power in January 1994 of hepatitis C during blood tests at the centre in Cork opened the floodgates on the standard of blood testing in Ireland and led to the Lindsay tribunal.
Dr Power was the director of the centre at the time and retains the title today, but in name only.
In the letter which the Minister will receive this week and which will be made public, the doctors say they have lost confidence in the service, call on its board to resign and suggest to the Minister that urgent reform is necessary.
It is unthinkable, the consultants say, that in the wake of the "greatest medical scandal" in the history of the State, the only alternative blood-testing centre to Dublin should be closed.
According to Prof Fergus Shanahan, professor of medicine at Cork University Hospital and UCC, there is also deep concern at the manner in which Dr Power's role as director of the Cork centre has been reduced "systematically" to a nominal one.
Since the hepatitis C scandal became public, Dr Power had been "marginalised" as director and no longer had a place on several medical boards to which she was formerly attached. "Without Dr Power's work, the tragedy uncovered in 1994 might have been even worse, yet she has been removed or excluded from key committees," Prof Shanahan said.
Staff members in Cork who had reported directly to her now had to report to Dublin and restrictions had been placed on her in terms of access to the media and travel to specialist conferences. There was no opposition in principle to single-site testing as proposed by the blood service, Prof Shanahan went on, but so far, it had not shown why it was necessary or how it would lead to a better service for the public.
However, an independent assessment of the testing operations in Dublin and Cork had not informed the proposal and until such an assessment had been carried out, there was no valid reason to close the Cork centre.
There were concerns, too, he said, that issues of back-up and quality control or audit, which the two-site testing method would provide, had not been addressed by the board and that its presentation to the Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children last year had raised "serious questions".
Dr Power, who also gave evidence to the committee, has claimed it was misled by the board, whether inadvertently or otherwise. She and the executive of the board have been invited to come before the committee again next month, according to its chairman, Fianna Fail TD Mr Batt O'Keeffe.
The committee had recommended two-site testing for a number of reasons, including the Cork centre's work in uncovering the hepatitis C scandal and the fact that it had received the ISO 9000 quality award, Mr O'Keeffe said.
The blood transfusion service has rejected claims of victimisation against Dr Power and said she was the only prehepatitis C senior staff member remaining in the service. She was also a member of the Medical Advisory Committee and the Consultants' Committee. "There is absolutely no victimisation," a spokesperson for the board said.