HAEMOPHILIACS preferred products derived from Irish blood in the early 1980s, believing it was less infected than other blood, the Tribunal of Inquiry was told.
Mr James Nugent SC, for the tribunal, said that in 1986 the National Haemophilia Centre switched to commercial blood products, manufactured abroad, because of the high rate of HIV infections incurred with Blood Transfusion Service Board products.
"The Irish Haemophilia Society had a preference for BTSB products because they were made from Irish blood and the belief was, at that stage, that it was less infected than other sources," he said.
But the consultant in charge of the haemophilia centre, Prof Ian Temperley, became disillusioned with the products, Mr Nugent said. "He found that patients who had been HIV negative were now sero converting and becoming HIV positive."
In 1986 the centre switched to commercial products and the rate of sero conversion dropped.
In 1990 the BTSB began having its products manufactured and treated by a company in Vienna.
Mr Nugent added that a British expert, Prof Savage, would be giving evidence to the tribunal that any national blood transfusion service should have been at least trying to introduce viral inactivation methods in the form of heat treating in 1984 and 1985".
After October 1991, when screening for hepatitis C was introduced, there was confusion as to how to deal with donors who tested because a liver biopsy, involving invasive surgery, was the only confirmatory test for the disease.
The BTSB had to have a policy one way or the other but, apart from the Munster region, there was no strategy on how to deal with donors testing positive.
Even in Munster, however, one person who tested positive - Donor L - gave blood on four occasions between October 1991 and November 1993. "As of yet, there is no explanation as to why blood was taken from him repeatedly, whatever about not telling him that he proved positive," he said.
But Dr Joan Power, BTSB regional director in Cork, had a policy in place for Munster, and from November 1993 wrote to people who tested positive in the intervening two years.
"All the procedures for informing and for treating the HCV (hepatitis C virus) people were in place, before Dr Power knew that antiD was the source of the problem," Mr Nugent added.