Dr Terry Walsh and Dr Cecily Cunningham are the first two people to be charged with offences arising from the hepatitis-C blood infection saga, which dates back to the mid-1970s.
The two former senior officials with the Blood Transfusion Service Board (BTSB) have already had their actions scrutinised at a tribunal of inquiry.
In his report on that investigation in March 1997, Mr Justice Thomas Finlay criticised both Dr Walsh and Dr Cunningham, along with a number of other BTSB employees. Most notably, these included the agency's national director, the late Dr James O'Riordan, who was said to have borne "major responsibility" for the infections which occurred.
Like all such investigative reports, however, it has no bearing on a criminal trial, representing, in effect, the opinion of the tribunal chairman - and nothing more.
For a prosecution to occur, it requires a separate investigation by the Garda, and this was exactly what happened in the case of the two former officials before the court yesterday.
The matters at the centre of the affair stretch back to November 1976 when plasma was taken from a pregnant woman - without her consent - for the manufacture of anti-D. This is a product given to women to help prevent illness and possible death in babies who have a different rhesus blood type.
The patient, identified only as Patient X, became jaundiced during treatment. Despite being made aware of this fact, the BTSB released and used stocks of her plasma.
In July 1977, the BTSB was notified of three women showing hepatitis-like symptoms after receiving anti-D. Existing stocks of the product continued to be used, however.
Specimens were sent by the BTSB to Middlesex Hospital for testing and the results cast doubt on the safety of using Patient X's plasma. Still, the BTSB failed to recall the product.
A further episode of contamination occurred, more than a decade later, when plasma donations were taken from Patient Y, a donor who was infected with hepatitis-C. In January 1991, the plasma was used to make anti-D, apparently without proper tests being conducted. Several batches of the product became contaminated as a result.
The infections first became public in 1994 when research showed a high incidence of hepatitis C among women who received anti-D. An expert group was set up under Dr Miriam Hederman-O'Brien, which criticised the BTSB's handling of the case in its report.
The issue had by then reached the political stage as pressure began to mount on the then minister for health, Mr Cowen, for a tribunal of inquiry. He subsequently came under fire for defending the State's challenge to Ms Brigid McCole, who sued over hepatitis-C infection through anti-D. The Co Donegal mother of 12 died in October 1996, just four days before her action was due to be heard in the High Court.
The Finlay tribunal - not to be confused with the Lindsay tribunal, which investigated the infection of haemophiliacs with HIV and hepatitis C - was subsequently established and its report was forwarded to the DPP.
Two months later, the then Garda Commissioner, Mr Pat Byrne, announced a criminal investigation into the hepatitis C scandal.
In an exercise which duplicated some of the work of the Finlay tribunal, hundreds of women were interviewed and statements were taken from several key players in the affair, including Dr Walsh and Dr Cunningham.
It is understood part of the reason for the delay in reaching the court was a difficulty in identifying a sufficient number of women willing to be named in the action.
