The father of a man who died of AIDS almost two years ago yesterday blamed the Government for his son's death.
"I think they put money before people and they are murderers," Mr Joseph Healy, from Greenmount in Cork city, told the fourth day of the public hearings of the haemophilia tribunal.
Mr Healy's son, Gerard, a founder member of the Cork AIDS Alliance, died in August 1998, aged 38. He had a wife and three children.
Gerard Healy was a mild haemophiliac and was treated with the Factor 8 blood-clotting agent around 1979. He was diagnosed HIV-positive in 1985 and received no counselling. He researched the condition himself and gained an encyclopaedic knowledge of HIV and AIDS. He did not hide his illness and became a professional counsellor for other sufferers.
Mr Healy claimed he had it "in black and white" that the National Haemophilia Treatment Centre at St James's Hospital, Dublin, knew in the early 1980s that Factor 8 treatment could lead to infection but continued using it. It was imported from the US where prostitutes and drug-users were selling their blood, he said.
He added that the people of Cork spent 13 years fighting for a consultant to treat HIV and AIDS patients. His son had to travel to London for respite facilities, and the local hospice would not take him because he had AIDS.
He read letters from Gerard's sisters, Martina and Mary, outlining the pain and hurt they had felt at losing their brother. They believed he was robbed of his life.