8 November 2022: O'Mahony - B

Questions form core participants:

On the HAA card and access to liver transplants; he said it didn’t affect that access, but it did assist in the assessment for a transplant.

On HAA card funding; he said it came from the Department of Health.

On how to get more information on care costs; he said it would be best to speak with Raymond Bradley of Malcolmson Law.

On reporting publicly on the awards, etc. of the Tribunal; he said these are published in general terms but efforts are made to keep these general to assist with safeguarding peoples’ personal data and confidentiality.

On the individual awards and the High Court reviews; he said these are not published for the same reasons as above.

On the liaison officers; he said they generally came from healthcare backgrounds and the Society was involved in their training.

On the report of the Lindsay Tribunal and its impact on organisational cultures; he said they put a great deal of effort into getting the recommendations right. It led to new bodies being set up and to Ireland being world leaders in universal access to safer blood products. The sense was that it was recognised such a tragedy could never be allowed to happen again. When explored, it seems that outwith bleeding disorders the contaminated blood experience has not made a significant culture and policy shift in other aspects of healthcare provision.

On the possibility of families disputing between themselves about awards; he said it was best to speak with Malcolmson Law about that.

On welfare benefits and taxation; he said the awards are fully exempted, the awards are not required to be declared, and any interest accrued is except from tax or capital gains tax.

On the witnesses’ international work and the adoption of Irish model elements by other countries; he said he did not know of any other country that had adopted the HAA card or insurance arrangements.

The Chair asked about the access to court-based settlements. The witness recognised the right to people to go to court. There is no “benchmarking” of awards in these fields, so it will largely be a new set of award amount calculations. The Chair also asked what the witness thought was instrumental in establishing the Lindsay Tribunal. The anti-D factor was significant. There had been a lot of work in designing what was to be investigated, including having sufficient differences from the anti-D cases. More time was spent on getting the Terms of Reference right than there was for the Lindsay Inquiry actually sitting. The witness could not think of anything not advanced by the recommendations. He mentioned the value of funding the Society on-going, with currently 70% of their income coming from the Government. This has been shown to be overall financially beneficial to the Government due to savings in other areas.

An additional question came up about seeking financial support from pharma companies, but this did not happen.

The witness made final comments by saying he was pleased to take part despite the work involved, but he acknowledged the emotional and other memories raised for him about all he has been involved with related to the contaminated blood situation.

The Chair thanked the witness for shining a very bright light on the issues from the Irish perspective and making recommendations that might very well find their way into his final report for this Inquiry.