A nurse who treated HIV positive haemophiliac children in the 1980s and 1990s said yesterday it was unfortunate she was not allowed to discuss their illness with them as it meant the children had nobody to talk to about their condition.
Ms Berna Reddin, who worked at the National Children's Hospital from 1988 to 1996, told the Lindsay tribunal it was her personal opinion that many of the children, who were aged up to 15 years, knew they were HIV positive.
She said parents did not want their children to know they were HIV positive and did not want staff at the hospital to discuss the child's HIV infection with them. "We complied with that," she said.
Asked by the solicitor for the Irish Haemophilia Society, Mr Raymond Bradley, if the hospital had any policy of discussing with parents the consequences of them telling their children they were HIV positive, or the implications of not telling them, Ms Reddin said no such policy was in place.
Earlier, Ms Laurette Kiernan, who was the only social worker at the National Children's Hospital from 1956 to 1989, said she attended the annual outpatient clinics for haemophilia children in the Meath Hospital. In the 1970s conditions there were " pretty grim".
She said parents took their children to the clinic and at times she had to interview them in the garden, so inadequate were the facilities.
Counsel for the tribunal, Mr John Finlay SC, asked if visits to the clinic were pressurised as the child had to see the whole haemophilia team, including doctors and dentists, during one session. "Pressure is not the word," she said, pointing out that she was "at the end of the pecking order" and would be lucky to get to see the families at all.
She sought an assistant social worker in 1977 and 1979 when the workload was "becoming quite impossible". No assistance was given.
Ms Kiernan compared the staffing levels at the National Children's Hospital to Temple Street, where there were four full-time and two part-time social workers, and to Crumlin, where there were four full-time social workers.
Another witness, Ms Brenda Mehigan, head social worker at the Adelaide and Meath Hospital, incorporating the National Children's Hospital, said she was the only social worker in the National Children's Hospital from 1990 to 1995. Because of staff shortages hers was "a crisis-driven service" and a lot of her time was taken up with cases of child abuse and neglect. She too sought additional staff and a second social worker was appointed in 1995.
Ms Mehigan said she was never told by medical or administrative staff that haemophiliac children were testing positive for hepatitis C in the 1990s. This was something she only became aware of from newspaper reports.