The chairman of the Irish Haemophilia Society (IHS) told the tribunal yesterday that he only learned by chance at a public seminar that haemophilia B patients had been infected with HIV.
Mr Brian O'Mahony, a haemophilia B patient himself, said the IHS would not have found out about the infections if he had not attended the conference.
The disclosure - that four to five haemophilia B patients had tested positive for HIV - was contained in a paper delivered by Prof Ian Temperley, the medical director of the National Haemophilia Treatment Centre, at a conference on AIDS at UCD in June 1986.
Mr O'Mahoney said he "got an awful shock" to hear not only that haemophilia B patients had tested positive, but that the source of the infection might have been Pelican House Factor 9.
Mr O'Mahony said he was "further shocked" when Prof Temperley put a transparency on an overhead projector listing by initials the haemophilia B patients who had tested positive.
Thankfully, he said, he was not among those infected but "if I was it would have been announced at a public meeting in UCD . . ."
He said he thought what happened was appalling. "These people were not initials to me. I knew some of these people."
