After two years, 186 days of evidence, and 148 witnesses, the Lindsay tribunal is finally drawing to a close.
Lawyers for the Irish Haemophilia Society and other parties to the inquiry will submit final statements next week before the chairwoman rises to prepare her report.
While its audience has been limited largely due to the technical nature of its subject matter, the tribunal should interest all of us.
In particular, it has illustrated, with shocking insight at times, the dismissive and uncaring manner in which a marginalised group of individuals were treated in this State. And nothing is more indicative of their plight than the delay in reaching this very point.
As "David", a HIV-infected haemophiliac, told the tribunal last month: "It's 15 years now" since the events most relevant to the inquiry occurred. The investigation, he said, "should have been done years ago". It is a comment to which all parties to the tribunal are likely to agree as none have benefited from the delay in establishing the inquiry.
It hasn't benefited doctors who have had to try to recall events from as early as three decades ago, sometimes in an attempt to refute the testimony of patients for whom memories were understandably more vivid.
Nor has it benefited the Irish Blood Transfusion Service, as the BTSB is now known, an agency struggling to regain public confidence after the anti-D scandal in which hundreds of women were infected with hepatitis C.
Nor, it goes without saying, has it benefited the victims - the estimated 252 haemophiliacs infected with HIV and/or hepatitis C - 78 of whom have died from illnesses related to their infection, including six since the start of the tribunal.
For them, Judge Lindsay's report will come too late, and for that the blame lies not with the tribunal's sole member, but rather, successive governments which chose to ignore the issue for years.
No administration was more culpable in this regard than the Fianna Fβil-Progressive Democrats coalition which, in 1991, forced haemophiliacs and their next-of-kin to accept a "no-fault" compensation deal at a time when many of them were dying.
What is most troubling about the settlement is not the hard-ball negotiating tactics which brought it about, nor the relatively low level of compensation promised.
No, what's worse is that the decimation of a community of vulnerable citizens by HIV, at a rate far higher than in other countries, was deemed a matter not worthy of investigation.
Even a cursory examination of the facts which were available at the time would have indicated the State was at least partially at fault for what happened. The tribunal has heard that information was available within the BTSB in as early as 1986 showing its products were responsible for infections.
Had the matters been examined when they should have been it is possible reform of the blood bank could have taken place at an earlier date, and the worst effects of subsequent blood scandals might have been avoided.
A long-overdue shake-up of the medical profession may also have been prompted, which could at least have eased the pain of haemophiliacs who were facing the new scourge of hepatitis C.
Instead, what the Lindsay tribunal is delivering is a largely historical report, made all the more imperfect by the fact that it will only explain the likely cause of about a dozen infections, namely those caused by the BTSB plus one or two others.
This latter eventuality stems from the chairwoman's decision to exclude the role of pharmaceutical companies, whose products were responsible for more than 90 per cent of infections, from the scope of her investigations.
The IHS is now seeking an inquiry into the drugs firms themselves. It is a demand which the Minister for Health and Children, Mr Martin, has said he would prefer to answer only after Judge Lindsay publishes her report, which is expected early next year.
When that date comes, he will have to ask himself whether he believes the State's debt to the haemophilia community has finally been repaid. Arguably, it never can be.
