GOVERNMENT embarrassment over the hepatitis C scandal is set to continue in spite of an abject apology by the Minister for Health, Mr Noonan, over comments he made about the late Mrs Brigid McCole and her solicitors.
A motion on the establishment of the judicial tribunal of inquiry into the controversy will be debated by the Oireachtas today.
Mr Noonan's apology at the end of a three hour Dail debate on the hepatitis C scandal, came after seven members of the Positive Action executive walked out of the Visitors' Gallery in protest at Mr Noonan's remarks and after opposition Deputies expressed outrage at his sentiments.
Positive Action, the group representing women infected with the hepatitis C virus, said it was glad the Minister "now appreciates the insensitivity of his remark".
The Minister admitted to the Dail that he had caused "understandable offence".
Apologising unreservedly, he said he did not mean to question the manner in which Mrs McCole's legal team had taken the actions it did but was merely criticising the adversarial system of court proceedings.
Mr Noonan was almost one third into his Dail script when he asked if Mrs McCole's solicitors would not have "served their client better if they had advised her to go to the Compensation Tribunal early this year".
Mrs McCole died before the High Court hearing of her case for damages against the Blood Transfusion Service Board, the State and the National Drugs Advisory Board. Her lawyers agreed to a settlement of £175,000 from the BTSB the night before her death. The BTSB admitted liability and publicly apologised to the McCole family.
However, in his comments to the Dail, Mr Noonan suggested she could have received "a significantly higher award" by going to the Compensation Tribunal rather than to the courts.
"She would not have had to face the enormous stress of court proceedings," he added.
But, in a remark that particularly incensed Positive Action, the Minister asked if her solicitors could not "in selecting a test case from the hundreds of hepatitis C cases on their books, have selected a plaintiff in a better condition to sustain the stress of a High Court case?"
Prior to this, Mr Noonan had argued that he was not aware of the precarious state of her health when the State opposed her application for an early court hearing.
Until this week he had also refused to set up a sworn inquiry on the grounds that the McCole case would be a judicial determination of events. He did not think she would die before the hearing.
The Minister asked during yesterday's debate if it was in her interests that her solicitors at tempted to "run her case not only in the High Court but also in the media and in the Dail simultaneously".
"If we are to review the conduct of the case by the State, have not the solicitors for the plaintiff a case to answer also?" he asked.
Following these remarks, members of the Positive Action executive left the Dail in protest and adjourned to a nearby hotel. They angrily called for an apology from Mr Noonan, or his resignation, saying his remarks were insensitive and an insult to the late Mrs McCole.
The chairwoman of Positive Action, Ms Jane O'Brien, said it had been Mrs McCole's personal choice to pursue her case through the High Court.
"The Minister might have preferred that she go to the tribunal and the negligence issue never to come to public attention," she added.
She asked how the Minister, could be so certain that" Mrs McCole would have received a higher award from the tribunal since he previously said it operated at arm's length from his office.
After the Minister's controversial statement, Mrs Maire Geoghegan Quinn, Fianna Fail, spokeswoman on Health, described pages eight and nine of Mr Noonan's prepared script, read to the Dail as "an appalling attack on the late Mrs McCole, her family and other victims".
For the Progressive Democrats, Ms Liz O'Donnell said: "It is a depressing indictment of Dail Eireann that we have been forced to resort to a tribunal of inquiry which will be debated tomorrow to establish facts which are already in the possession of the State and State boards."