Solicitors, ledgers and standing room only

IT WAS a good start. There were new yellow ledgers, standing room only and an air of expectation in Court No 3 yesterday.

At 2 p.m. the former chief justice, Mr Thomas Finlay, took his seat.

An hour and II minutes later, he concluded the first sitting of the tribunal of inquiry into the hepatitis C scandal.

The tribunal would work until its last day with a deep sense of the human cost behind the events, he said.

Solicitors and barristers sat together around the top table, while others stood with folders in the aisles, as Mr Finlay read out the terms of reference agreed by the Dail last month.

Members of the executive of Positive Action, the group representing more than 600 women infected by contaminated anti were in the High Court to hear their counsel, Mr John Rogers SC, argue that they should be represented at the tribunal.

They were one of 10 groups, including the Department of Health, the "public interest" and the Blood Transfusion Service Board, who made a case to Mr Finlay for a say in proceedings.

Counsel for the tribunal, Mr James Nugent SC, said the first step should be to acknowledge the effects of the events under investigation on the lives of those infected.

Mr Finlay said he hoped people would not be too horrified if he asked some of the parties for a summary of their case for representation by the weekend. "In the jargon of commerce, errors and omissions will be accepted. Nobody will hold you to it."

He said the tribunal would have to look at those events in a "cold clinical fashion" but that should not be interpreted as a lack of sympathy. The tribunal's task was to uncover the truth. And it was a truth that should set people free.

In order to get on the fast track to that truth, Mr Nugent asked that all the parties submit a detailed version of the facts which would be circulated to each party.

"They could then say what they disagree on", and that would shorten the time spent on oral hearings.