TWO senior officials from the Department of Health yesterday said information they gave a 1994 investigation into the Blood Transfusion Service Board (BTSB) was not intended to mislead.
Mr Gerry Guidon and Mr John Gillen were giving evidence to the tribunal about the appearance in Department files of a one page renewal form, retrospectively authorising anti D, after it had been withdrawn in February 1994.
Mr Michael Collins, a clerical assistant, told the tribunal he had been requested to secure the document on the "instruction" of Mr O'Neill, a higher executive officer in the public health division. Mr O'Neill said he had given no such instruction.
Neither Mr Gillen nor Mr Guidon could recall explaining this "misunderstanding" to the Expert Group in 1994. Mr Gillen, an assistant principal in the division and Mr O'Neill's immediate superior at the time, said he had accepted Mr O'Neill's explanation. He had not spoken to Mr Collins about it and he was sure he made his superior, Mr Guidon, aware of it.
He and Mr Guidon had met Mr Fergal Lynch of the Expert Group on May 12th 1994, to discuss the matter. Mr Lynch, another Department official, was secretary to the Expert Group.
He could not recall whether he had told Mr Lynch that what had taken place was contrary to procedure. He was sure "if the matter came up" he wouldn't have hesitated to say it was contrary to procedure.
"Wasn't the effect of this to mislead the group?" asked Mr David McParland for Positive Action and the McCole family. "It was not intended, if it had that effect," replied Mr Gillen.
He agreed that from a letter written to him on April 7th 1994, by the Department's chief pharmacist, Mr Thomas McGuinn, he would have been aware the one page document could "become one of considerable embarrassment to this Department should the Expert Group recently appointed by the Minister decide to raise questions in this area", as Mr McGuinn had written.
Mr Guidon, then a principal officer, thought "it would seem very likely" he would have questioned Mr O'Neill on the renewal matter. Mr Gillen would have reported to him about it and Mr Lynch was "a colleague with whom I had a good relationship".
"Wasn't it the case of being asked the right questions and giving the right answers?" asked Mr Rory Brady, counsel for the tribunal. Mr Guidon protested he did not understand.
"In failing to disclose this so called misunderstanding you left Mr Lynch with the impression it was the practice in the Department," suggested Mr John Rogers SC, for Positive Action and the McCole family. "I did not deliberately set out to mislead him" replied Mr Guidon.
In his note following the May 12th 1994 discussion, Mr Lynch wrote that it was the Department's "practice", as part of "a paper exercise", to issue product authorisations retrospectively, and that "this was the reason" for the one page renewal document.
In its 1995 report the Export Group concluded that issuing the document was "part of normal procedures" and "was not for the purposes of deflecting attention from the previous absence of a product authorisation".
