Most of €95m blood tribunal legal fees go to a handful of solicitors
A handful of solicitors' firms have earned most of the €95m paid out in legal fees for representing victims of HIV and Hepatitis C infection at the State compensation tribunal, it was revealed yesterday.
The tribunal, set up more than a decade ago to compensate people who received contaminated blood, will have to sit for many years to come, and is expected to end up paying out over €1bn.
However, the Department of Health confirmed yesterday that while the tribunal had paid out €778m to date, legal costs have now increased to €95.4m.
Last year's legal bills escalated to €11m.
A small number of solicitors' firms are given most of the work including Malcomson Law, Ivor Fitzpatrick and Co, and Lavelle Coleman, generating a multi-million euro income for their practices over the years.
The tribunal was set up in 1996 to compensate around 1,600 women infected with Hepatitis C through the blood product Anti-D. It has also compensated people who received contam-inated transfusions.
Blood products
It was also agreed the tribunal would provide additional compensation for people with haemophilia who were infected with HIV, and in some cases Hepatitis C, through contaminated blood products.
These people, it was acknowledged, were not properly looked after through a scheme in the late 1980s.
The average payouts have been in the region of €143,647, but one of the highest was paid to a young man with haemophilia, 10 years ago, who was awarded €3.1m.
Human cost
Brian O' Mahony of the Irish Haemophilia Society said yesterday his organisation had no problem with the fees paid to the solicitors and, although it has been running for a number of years, each case is different.
"The real cost has been the human cost", he said.
There have been 81 deaths among men with haemophilia who were given tainted blood products, leaving them with HIV, Hepatitis C or both infections.
He said a significant number had utilised the option of appealing the awards they were offered at the tribunal to the High Court, and in all cases they were successful.
The awards had fallen behind the going trend in the area of general damages and were not reflecting reality, he added.
Life assurance
He was hopeful a government subsided scheme, allowing people with the infections who cannot get life assurance, will eventually be up and running next month -- eight years after it was first promised.
Even as recently as the last few months, a number of people have died, leaving their families with any form of life insurance, he added.
Ellen O' Mahony works for Positive Action, the group representing women infected through the product Anti-D. She said that although this was first revealed in 1994, small numbers of people are only finding out now they received the infection.
People are continuing to live and die with Hepatitis C and that should not be forgotten, she added.
Looking at the payouts by the tribunal was a "crude measure" of the real cost, she insisted.
Last month Dr Cecily Kelleher, one of the principal officers in the former Blood Transfusion Service Board, failed to stop a criminal case being brought against her.
