A batch of blood-clotting agents made from Irish plasma, which would have been safer than imported products, was available to treat haemophiliacs in the Republic from June 1984, but was never used, the tribunal heard.
Patients continued to be given imported clotting agents made from plasma collected in the US.
The product made from Irish plasma was manufactured for the Blood Transfusion Service Board (BTSB) on a pilot basis at a plant in Belgium by the Travenol pharmaceutical company in early 1984. About 170,000 international units of the factor 8 clotting agent for persons with haemophilia A were made from the "native" plasma and sent to Pelican House by Travenol in June 1984.
Cross-examined by counsel for the Irish Haemophilia Society, Mr John Trainor SC, the present deputy medical director of the Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS), Dr Emer Lawlor, said the amount produced in Belgium was enough to meet up to 10 per cent of requirements in one year.
Counsel put it to Dr Lawlor that it was "extraordinary" that such a large quantity of product was never used. Dr Lawlor said she could not explain why. It seemed to have ultimately disappeared and, given that it was not used by 1985, she believed it would have been withdrawn, because heat-treated product, whereby products were heated to a high temperature to deactivate viruses, became available at that stage. There was no record of the Travenol product having been destroyed.
Dr Lawlor said that the BTSB's senior technical officer, the late Mr Sean Hanratty, had been recorded in minutes of meetings informing members of the National Haemophilia Services Co-ordinating Committee that the product was available for use.
In documents opened to the tribunal yesterday, Mr Hanratty was recorded as telling a meeting of the committee of its existence in November 1984, the month the first haemophiliac in the State was diagnosed with AIDS.
Dr Lawlor said she did not know what the cost of making the unused product was, but there was a reference in mid-1985 to the BTSB auditors writing off a sum of £57,000, and this may have referred to the pilot project.