11 May 2022: Rejman - D

Off the bat, Dr Rejman does not answer another by way of his questioning the displayed document (a meeting minute) from which the question is derived. Stop doing this, please. The question related to a reluctance to release documents to an Irish legal process because it would place Government documents related to Non-A-Non-B Hepatitis into the public domain which they would not want to be so available for scrutiny. I wonder what was so potentially damaging related to an as yet not properly named pathogen as to justify withholding it from the public. No wonder so many of us are suspicious of the actions and motivation of officials.

Now to the topic of destroyed or lost documents. As previously reported, there were personal documents and official documents. The normal period for holding on to documents was five years, then they would be destroyed; so long as they could be considered redundant and not likely to ever be needed again. When required to do so, Dr Rejman trawled through sets of documents, noting they were all in date order. Oh, that our medical records were so well archived. During one search through files, it was noted that one set of documents relating to the ACVSB had been destroyed. These covered the period from 16/05/1989 to 19/07/1990. The handwriting on the docket indicates the box (Box 4) was destroyed on 29/09/1994. Authority to destroy documents was not within Dr Rejman’s remit. Prior to destruction, these types of files were often stored away from DH premises; at a place called DRO. The process of looking out documents was described as “discovery”. Other dockets related to “GEB” were displayed as having been destroyed in 1997. Dr Rejman did not know anything about how Box 4 came to be destroyed earlier than it should have been; i.e. before the “review date”.

Was there a Freudian slip when Dr Rejman was talking about a process of discovering documents for a litigation purpose, and he used the words, “against haemophiliacs”?

One displayed paper suggested Dr Rejman had not recalled certain documents when he should have, but he was able to state forcefully that the section of the document suggesting this is full of errors. This has apparently led to a series of subsequent errors in the same document. The matter of premature destruction of files will no doubt rear its head a few more times in the days and weeks to come.