THE refusal by the Hepatitis C Tribunal of Inquiry to grant separate legal representation to a number of groups representing victims is to be raised in the Dail this week by Mrs Ma ire Geoghegan Quinn, the Fianna Fail spokeswoman on health.
Mrs Geoghegan Quinn said that she had been assured by the Minister for Health, Mr Noonan, when the inquiry was being established, that "all the victims of this scandal", including those contaminated through transfusions, would receive the same treatment. "It was on this basis that Fianna Fail co operated, in the main, with the passage of the terms of the tribunal", she said.
"Not all issues in this scandal are common to all victims, and therefore those representing transfusion victims, haemophiliacs and kidney patients have separate legitimate questions that need to be asked at the tribunal.
"One of these questions specific to transfusion victims is a very burning one that has already been highlighted. It relates to why a victim contaminated through a transfusion was not told by the BTSB for two years that he had tested positive for hepatitis C."
She has called on the Minister to amend the terms of the tribunal to give groups representing transfusion victims legal representation and to ensure that all questions raised by the family of Mrs Brigid McCole are answered.
"One of the family's questions is currently excluded. This question, asking who authorised the jackboot legal strategy which was employed in the McCole case, has to be central to the inquiry, as it was a wish of Mrs McCole, when she was on her death bed, that it be answered."