A former BTSB employee an Hanratty, who, it was disclosed last week, ordered the destruction of key dispatch documentation in 1993 was again at the centre of the tribunal's investigations yesterday.
The late Mr Sean Hanratty, senior technical officer who retired from the board in 1993 and died three years later, was named as the person in charge of a research project in the early 1980s which, if successful, may have stopped many haemophiliacs from becoming infected.
The project was to make the Blood Transfusion Service Board self-sufficient in the Factor 8 and Factor 9 clotting agents for haemophiliacs, an objective supported at the time by the Council of Europe as a means of reducing dependency on imported blood products which were shown to be more likely to carry a risk of infection.
Mr Hanratty headed the research team which, between 1981 and 1983, attempted to produce Factor 8 at Pelican House using plasma from Irish donors. Documentation from the period showed that Mr Hanratty, along with the board's national director, Mr Jack O'Riordan, had a great deal of faith in the project.
In January 1982 Mr Hanratty reported that trials would be completed within three months and concentrates produced for patients within six months. The test product - applied to 15 patients - was said to have had "an excellent clinical response", with immediate arresting of bleeding and no adverse reaction.
However, suddenly and without warning, the project was abandoned in 1984 in favour of contract fractionation, a process whereby overseas pharmaceutical companies were contracted to make Factor 8 from Irish plasma.
Why was the project abandoned? This was the question posed by Mr John Trainor SC, counsel for the Irish Haemophilia Society, in his cross-examination yesterday of Dr Emer Lawlor, deputy medical director of the Irish Blood Transfusion Service, as the BTSB is now known.
The answer, Mr Trainor suggested, may rest in how the project was funded. No application for funding was made to the Department of Health. Yet a laboratory technician was employed by the board to work on the project with Mr Hanratty.
Dr Lawlor conceded that, as there was no record of any payment from the board towards the technician's salary, it was possible it was paid by a pharmaceutical company.
Mr Trainor noted that if it had been successful both the board and Travenol, a drug company which had been contracted to provide container bags for the project, would have benefited financially, as they could have patented the method of production.
Mr Trainor also suggested there was a possibility of a third party benefiting from the project.
Dr Lawlor stressed that there was no question that it was done for any other reason than to try to make the board self-sufficient.
The technician who worked with Mr Hanratty on the plan, and who has not been named as she has yet to be approached by the tribunal, is due to give evidence at a later sitting.
There was no reference to her employment in the minutes of board meetings at the time, nor in Mr Hanratty's progress reports on the project. Neither has the tribunal been able to find any documentation showing her terms of employment.
If it is found that the project was funded by a drug company, the board's decision to terminate it will be cast in a new light. In particular, questions will arise as to whether the decision was more the company's than the board's, and whether a possible means of safeguarding the health of haemophiliacs was abandoned due to external commercial interests.
Whether any individual may have benefited personally from a contract arrangement will also have to be investigated. No proof of any such irregular benefit has been uncovered by the tribunal despite Mr Trainor's raising of it as a possibility.
That may yet change, however.