Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)

I support Deputy McManus's amendment and those of the other Opposition speakers. In presenting this Bill the Tánaiste outlined the potential appalling vista of the floodgate opening, but she is badly informed. There is no floodgate. The 15,000 to 16,000 people to whom we refer are from 1991 to 1994 and are not queuing up to enter the tribunal or the High Court. Neither do they present in large numbers at clinics for treatment. They got a different type of hepatitis C, type three, which is easily dealt with and has been dealt with to a great extent. This figure comes from a look-back programme by the Blood Transfusion Service Board, BTSB. If that trawl throws up 60 people, that would be considered a large number. If a large number of these people exist, the floodgate of which the Tánaiste speaks has been open since the original hepatitis C Act was introduced. Where are the hordes and floods of people? They do not exist.

It is worrying to hear the Tánaiste speak in these terms. Equally worrying is the bad advice she is receiving, and not, it appears, from the officials in her Department. Everybody to whom we have spoken has said the officials in the Department of Health and Children have been most helpful. Does the Minister realise the damage she has done between the various groups and her Department staff? They must continue to work with these people and are in a position whereby a Bill that was negotiated in good faith has a retrospectively limiting piece of legislation tagged onto it. The groups were never informed of it. They made clear that if there were a difficulty on diagnosis they would be prepared to discuss it at length and come to an agreement, which they always have done on every other issue.

On behalf of those who test negative I find this Bill deeply offensive. There are people who will support the case of the four groups involved. I direct the Tánaiste to the work of Professor Peter Simmonds, a professor of the University of Edinburgh Centre for Infectious Diseases, who was called as a witness by the State. Professor Simmonds does nothing but examine such matters in depth. He refers to a study in the former East Germany where samples from women infected at an early stage were kept and the women tracked over a 30-year period. He talks about these women who had tested positive because they knew it had happened and knew how to test. All were cleared of the virus and lost all markers of the disease over a 23-year period. As the original infection of hepatitis C in this country took place in 1977, this is virtually the same history. That is the only history we have. In 1991, the BTSB received the letter about blood studied reporting that there was something unidentified in the blood, not non-A or non-B, which turned out to be hepatitis C. When one examines that, it is clear that this disease does not have a history. Because it is new, we are not certain what we area talking about, how it develops and how it will progress.

I am surprised that the Tánaiste is being badly advised and that she has not met the people whose advice she has taken up to now. They have come to Dublin and tried to meet the Tánaiste. One of the women involved, a specialist who was involved in negotiating the Bill with the Department, came to Dublin today and has since gone home very upset. She feels the Bill she negotiated should have been stand-alone legislation. She found the Department very helpful, although she did not agree with everything it said. These issues should have been dealt with later and in a different way.

The floodgate the Minister has been told about has been open since the original compensation scheme was introduced but only 2,200 claimants came forward out of an estimated possible infection rate of 69,000. Where did the flood happen? It did not and will not happen. I lived through the first hepatitis C episode. The Minister is making exactly the same mistake made then. The scheme was hard won and dealt well with people whose lives had been affected in a continuing and fundamental way. The State has an obligation to own up to the fact that a State organisation allowed this to happen. As politicians and guardians of the public purse we must ensure that everything possible is done for these people. That should include symptoms and clinical diagnosis.

These people should be allowed to go through the system and the tribunal. Why does the Minister no longer trust the tribunal? Why does she not trust consultants? We trust them every day with our health, and that of our children and parents, so why not now? The Minister is being badly advised.

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