At last the Blood Transfusion Service Board has formally admitted legal liability in all the cases of hepatitis C that were the result of contaminated blood products. That the admission should come so late in the day can be no surprise. It is all of a piece with the rest of the sorry saga in which the revelation of information on what happened has had many of the characteristics of trying to get blood from a stone. At least denial is no longer an option: Mr Justice Finlay's clear and careful report from the tribunal of inquiry saw to that.
But the story is not yet concluded. As has been revealed in the explanatory memorandum on the draft legislative proposals to give statutory status to the tribunal to deliver compensation to the victims of the hepatitis C scandal, there is still room for further argument and division before the proposals become law. The Irish Haemophilia Society has indicated a preference for the setting up of a reparation fund from which percentage awards could be paid on top of such ordinary compensation amounts as may be awarded by the tribunal. The society favours this on the sensible grounds that it would prove swift.
Other organisations may not agree with this preference and Positive Action, the organisation representing the women whose hepatitis resulted from the administration of Anti-D contaminated as a result of the use of plasma from a patient with hepatitis C, prefers the option which would allow the tribunal itself to determine and award aggravated damages in cases where this is deemed appropriate.
Discussion on these options and a third which would establish a State funded arbitrator to decide on whether an applicant deserved aggravated damages needs to be speedily concluded so that a Bill may be presented to the Oireachtas for the swiftest possible approval. It took far too long to agree the details in order to establish the existing compensation tribunal, again confirming the impression of a saga characterised by actions that provided too little too late.
Meanwhile, the Government must report regularly and openly on the extent to which the recommendations of the Finlay report, designed to prevent the recurrence of similar disasters in the future, are being implemented. Such reports must continue until it is clear that every last recommendation has been acted upon effectively. The opposition parties must play their part in ensuring that this is so. The work of the compensation tribunal - statutory or otherwise will necessarily, if regrettably, drag on for some time to come. But everything possible must be done to speed matters along and particularly to make things as easy as possible for all claimants. As to the reported inclusion of a clause in the proposed legislation which would give the State and its agencies the right of appeal against the findings of a statutory tribunal, it is understandable that this may evoke further anger from the claimants and their representative organisations. But the clause can be viewed as being merely an enabling provision in case of aberrant emergencies in the process, and it should be remembered that it will take a governmental decision to invoke the clause. This and any future government must surely have learned by now that such decisions would be as much political as legal and would, therefore, use the clause only with great care and caution, and then in only the most extreme situations.