Professor Anthony Staines:

I will start at the top with Deputy Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin's comments. I thank him for his kind words. It was very nice of him to say it. He is absolutely right about haemochromatosis. It is one of the issues I raised the first time I met the medical director on taking over as chairman. He and I both felt what we were doing was foolish because we were taking blood from people and throwing it away. We have set up two clinics, one in Dublin and the other in Limerick, and will be setting up further ones, at which we provide a service where we take blood from a person who needs a venesection which is typically prescribed by his or her general practitioner or consultant. If the person is eligible to donate - everyone is not suitable for the reasons to which Deputy Catherine Byrne alluded - he or she can choose to do so. It is entirely a free choice for the individual. If he or she chooses to become a donor, we will take his or her blood, test, treat and process it, just like everybody else's. If he or she chooses not to donate, we will take blood in a special bag in order that there can be no possibility of error and dispose of it. Our objective this year is to roll out the service to all of our donor clinics. We have a new IT system which will I hope be installed next month. Once it is working and has bedded down, we hope people with haemochromatosis will be able to donate anywhere in the country and at any routine donor clinic. We are collecting quite an amount of blood in D'Olier Street, Limerick and Stillorgan from people with haemochromatosis.