Media 'prompted new stance on haemophiliacs'

Negative media coverage of the Government's treatment of haemophiliacs caused a "sea-change" in its approach to compensating those infected with contaminated blood products, a new book on the infection crisis suggests.

Launched in Dublin last night, A Case of Bad Blood, by Ms Rosemary Daly, former administrator of the Irish Haemophilia Society (IHS), criticises several members of the Cabinet, including the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, and the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, for their handling of the affair.

Ms Daly, who this year retired from the IHS after 13 years, accuses the Department of Health of introducing a new clause in compensation negotiations in April 2002, five days after an agreement had been reached between the two parties.

Ms Daly said that when she learned of the clause, which would have reduced payments to haemophiliacs infected with both HIV and hepatitis C, she informed Mr Martin that if it remained in place the IHS would pull out of the deal. But the Minister told her "the offending section had to stay", she writes.

That evening RTÉ News reported that the deal was close to collapse, and the following morning the story received extensive coverage in the print media.

There followed "a sea-change in the attitude of the Department of Health officials at our meeting the next day", says Ms Daly.

"Where there had been outright hostility, suddenly there was an open door. A deal was clearly going to be done and it would be on our terms. Funny how negative media coverage before a looming election can concentrate the minds of an outgoing Government desperate to stay in power," she writes.

The deal in question, estimated to cost the Exchequer up to €100 million, sought to provide a "full and final" settlement with more than 260 haemophiliacs who were infected with HIV and/or hepatitis C through blood products. A total of 81 such haemophiliacs have died from the infections, including one man earlier this year.

In the book, Ms Daly also describes the difficulties the society had in negotiating legal representation at the Lindsay tribunal which inquired into the affair.

She says that in 1999 she held a "bizarre" meeting on the issue at Leinster House with Mr Martin and the then attorney general, Mr McDowell. The latter introduced himself as "protector of charities" and, within a very short space of time, began quizzing the society's solicitor, Mr Raymond Bradley, "extremely closely about whether or not he had apprised his clients of the legal costs they were incurring", she writes.

"I happened to be sitting closest to Mr McDowell and, at one point, he turned to me and winked. I didn't like it. I didn't like his approach. I didn't think he was 'protecting' the IHS."

The book, which concentrates on the human cost of the crisis, is written with the assistance of RTÉ reporter Paul Cunningham.

Published by Poolbeg, it was launched at a function at the Shelbourne Hotel by the broadcaster Eamon Dunphy.