Hundreds of documents have been withheld from the Lindsay tribunal by hospitals, health boards, doctors and an insurance company because it is claimed the papers are covered by "legal professional privilege", it emerged yesterday.
The information came to light when the Irish Haemophilia Society (IHS) made an application to a special sitting of the tribunal seeking an order for the production of all relevant documents by all parties before the tribunal.
Counsel for the IHS, Mr Martin Giblin SC, said the parties were obliged under a specific term of reference of the tribunal to provide all documents.
He said term of reference number five required "all persons employed in the Departments of State and State agencies concerned shall give their full co-operation to the tribunal and those Departments of State and agencies shall themselves fully co-operate with the tribunal by providing it with all the documents and information requested of them that are in their possession or power".
Mr Giblin emphasised this was not a term of reference agreed for either the Flood or Moriarty tribunals and argued it had been inserted by the Oireachtas to facilitate the inquiry to the greatest possible extent. If the documents were withheld on the basis of a claim of privilege, the tribunal would be obstructed from conducting a full inquiry.
He said affidavits sworn by several parties, including the Blood Transfusion Service Board; the National Drugs Advisory Board; St James's Hospital; the Adelaide and Meath hospitals; the Southern, Western and North Eastern Health Boards; Prof Ian Temperley; and the Church & General Insurance company, which is the insurer of the BTSB and the National Children's Hospital, did not list the documents over which privilege was claimed, as required, and did not set out the basis on which this claim of privilege was advanced.
The IHS application was contested by all other parties before the tribunal on similar grounds. Mr Frank Clarke SC, for the BTSB, said the argument advanced by the IHS was "fundamentally flawed" because the right to assert legal professional privilege was enshrined in law.
Mr Maurice Collins, counsel for St James's Hospital, said he found the suggestion that his client was suppressing documents deeply objectionable.
Tribunal chairperson Judge Alison Lindsay will hear further submissions today before making her ruling.