THE Minister for Health "unreservedly" apologised for suggesting that the late Mrs Brigid McCole's legal representatives should have advised her to go to the compensation tribunal rather than the High Court in pursuing her action for damages in the hepatitis C scandal.

The apology came at the end of a question and answer session, which followed statements by Mr Noonan and the opposition spokeswomen on health.

Opening the debate earlier, Mr Noonan, in a detailed statement, said the tribunal offered an unprecedented forum where the claims of the hepatitis C victims were, in effect, unopposed.

"Uniquely, among persons entitled to compensation, they can obtain it without any opposition, with no risk of cross examination. The State, the Minister and the BTSB are not represented before the tribunal. Only the applicant, the applicant's lawyers and the applicant's witnesses are heard.

It was not surprising that of the 140 award applications none was rejected, he said, adding that the House should contrast this with the court system which was adversarial, with all that implied.

"On reflection, would not the solicitors for the plaintiff have served their client better if they had advised her to go to the compensation tribunal early this year? Is it not accepted in the legal profession that the tribunal is working very well, and that Mrs McCole could have received a significantly higher award by going before it?

"She would not have had to face the enormous stress of court proceedings. Could her solicitors 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?

"Was it in the interest of their client to attempt 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?"

Later, during the question and answer session, Mr Tom Kitt (FF, Dublin South) said the Minister's remarks were uncalled for and should be withdrawn. Mrs, McCole and her family had a democratic right to take the case and ask her solicitors to do it for them he said. "I, for one, would feel it would be helpful if you did withdraw those remarks ... I found them, quite frankly, very offensive.

Mr Noonan said he now realised that his remarks had caused "understandable offence" to Mrs McCole's family, to other victims, and to those in the organisation associated with the campaign.

"And I would like to avail of this opportunity to apologise unreservedly for any offence. It was not intended in any way whatsoever. I certainly did not mean to question in any way the right of Mrs McCole and her legal team to take the course of action which they did.

"It is a great personal tragedy for the family and Mrs McCole, and I apologise again for any hurt I may have caused. I was making criticisms of the adversarial legal system. And in the course of an adversarial legal system sometimes contending parties can cause difficulty, and it was in that context ... and there was no intention of hurting or offending Mrs McCole's family in any way whatsoever.

In his earlier statement, the Minister said what had occurred was nothing less than a public health disaster. "The number of persons involved, the fact that some of the originally infected women became blood donors leading to both men and women being subsequently infected through blood transfusions and that a second infected donor in 1989 caused the infection of another cohort of persons, underlines the enormity of the disaster."

Mr Noonan repeated the "strong legal advice" given to him that the State was not liable. "If I were to accede to the demands being made on me to admit liability on behalf of the State, I would be accepting liability on behalf of all ministers and all officers of the department who dealt with the BTSB over the years, and in terms of impending court cases back to 1970."

On the State's decision to contest anonymity in the Mrs McCole case, he said a court judgment had found it had not jurisdiction to allow her take proceedings using a fictitious name, and that to do so would contravene the Constitution.

Mr Noonan recalled that in 1994 the Fianna Fail Labour government set up an informal inquiry under the chairmanship of Dr Miriam Hederman O'Brien. "In retrospect it might have been better if a full judicial inquiry was set up at that time, but I can fully understand, taking the circumstances of the time into account, why it was not."

On the role of the BTSB, the Minister said that when tests, from UCD and Middlesex Hospital, proved negative, the BTSB, according to the expert group, apparently concluded Donor X's jaundice was due to environmental factors.

"We now know that their conclusion was incorrect . . She had hepatitis C."

He had never argued as to the culpability or otherwise of the BTSB in respect of those events, the Minister added.