6th April 2005 - Board Minutes
Minutes of the Meeting of the Board of the Irish Blood Transfusion Service held on Wednesday 6th April, 2005 at 2.00 p.m. in the Boardroom, National Blood Centre, Jamess Street, Dublin 8
Present: Ms. Maura McGrath (Chairperson)
Mr. Sean Wyse
Ms. Valerie Mannix
Dr. Mary Cahill
Mr. David Lowe
Ms. Jane OBrien
Dr. Cees Van Der Poel
Mr. David Keenan
Mr. Tony McNamara
Dr. Mary Horgan
Apologies: Dr Liz Keane
In Attendance: Mr. Andrew Kelly (CE)
Dr. William Murphy (NMD)
Mr. Michael Healy (SEO)
1. Minutes of Meeting 09.03.2005
The minutes of the Board meeting held on Wednesday, March 9th 2005 were adopted on the proposal of Ms. V. Mannix, seconded by Mr. D. Keenan and signed by the Chairperson subject to agreed amendments.
2. Matters arising
The Risk register will come to Board at the next meeting.
The CE brought the Boards attention to a letter he had received from the IHCA regarding contracts for Medical Consultants. He noted that the correspondence primarily referred to patients whereas IBTS Consultants primarily deal with donors.
3. Correspondence
The Chairperson briefed the Board on the six items of correspondence that had been circulated with the Board papers to members.
4. Chair in Transfusion Medicine - IBTS/UCC/CUH
Dr Mary Cahill informed the Board that Mr T McNamara, the CUH Medical Manpower Manager and herself had met with representatives of UCC with a view to exploring the joint establishment of a Chair of Transfusion Medicine between IBTS, UCC and CUH. There was a positive response for such an initiative from all parties. It was agreed that the working group would draft a proposal dealing with such matters as funding, staff requirements, research interests, and would bring forward a proposal to the next Board meeting. Such a proposal could then form the basis for discussion with UCC.
5. Chief Executives Report
The report was noted.
The CE informed the Board that the IT applications Manager had resigned. This person also was the Project manager for the implementation of eProgesa, which is an important project for the IBTS. This work has been re-assigned to other IT staff and it is hoped to recruit to this position without delay.
Mr S Wyse joined the meeting at this stage.
Ms J OBrien joined the meeting at this stage.
6. Financial Results 31st December 2004
Ms S Bailey, Director of Finance gave a presentation on the draft financial statements for 2004. She highlighted the activity increases in all major product categories and gave a detailed breakdown of all the main increases or decreases that occurred in expenditure headings between 2003 and 2004.
Ms Bailey gave the background on the proposal to implement Activity Based Costing (ABC), its advantages and disadvantages, the importance of understanding the activities that are driving costs and the experience of other BTSs with ABC.
Mr D Lowe on behalf of the Finance Committee thanked Ms S Bailey, Mr N Murphy and the Finance Dept staff for their excellent work. This was endorsed by the Board.
Donor Notification
A discussion took place regarding the recommendations and conclusions of the Kubanek Report and how the Board should respond to them. It was agreed to ask the Executive to respond in the first instance to the report, to demonstrate that national procedures and guidelines are in place, and how any deviations are managed. It was agreed that there should be no ambiguity regarding the management structure and accountability in the IBTS.
8. Strategic Plan
The revised Strategic Plan incorporating some of the comments of members had been circulated with the Board papers. The Strategic Plan will be posted on the IBTS Intranet site and a hardcopy will be available in every department. The plan will be reviewed on a yearly basis. It was suggested that a sub committee of the Board on Strategy and Policy would be established that would be given the responsibility of looking at IBTS Strategy and the future opportunities and risks facing the IBTS. This committee could meet on a quarterly or half-yearly basis and could review agreed targets with the Executive. It was suggested that the various IBTS documents that have been drawn up, such as the Strategic Plan and Risk Register, could be drawn together so that the Board, Executive and staff would have a clear vision of the direction the IBTS is taking.
The Board formally adopted the Strategic Plan and a date for launching the Plan will be agreed in the near future.
9. Minutes of Audit Committee Meeting - 05.01.2005
The minutes were noted.
The Board approved the Revised Terms of Reference for the Audit Committee.
10. Minutes of the MAC Meeting 16.02.2005
Dr Mary Cahill briefed the Board on the MAC Meeting of 16.02.2005.
The NMD informed the Board that the vCJD workshop will take place on June 3rd 2005 and will run from 10am to 4pm approximately. All, Board members are invited.
11. Follow up on Governance
The Chairperson briefed the Board members on her memorandum of March 30th outlining
the rationale for the methodology whereby the Kubanek Report was circulated to individuals and groups. There was some discussion as to the timing of when groups and individuals had been provided with copies of the report and to the exact nature of the process involved. However it was unanimously agreed that it was important for the representative groups to have sight of the report in the first instance and to have the opportunity of being briefed by Professor Kubanek. It was understood that the representative groups were appreciative of the invitation to meet with Prof. Kubanek and of the opportunity to have a question and answer session with him. If required, the IBTS agreed to meet with them again and provide back up tables to the report.
It was suggested that more time would be required to deal with the matter of Board Governance and it was agreed that a day be set aside for the Board to deliberate on the matter in a workshop using the strategic plan as a backdrop.
The SEO and NMD left the meeting at this stage. The meeting concluded shortly thereafter.
The next meeting of the Board will take place at 2pm in the NBC on Wednesday May 11th 2005.
Signed:
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.. Date:
