Throughout the Lindsay hearings, the Irish Haemophilia Society was referred to as a beacon of hope in the worst of times. Its chairman is Mr Brian O'Mahoney (42), himself a haemophiliac, who in the mid-1980s noticed, well before the health authorities, that the HIV virus could be sexually transmitted.
He circumvented the ban on condoms by purchasing vast supplies himself and handing them to IHS members. Trained as a lab technician, he is now on secondment from a large hospital to concentrate on his work for the IHS and as president of the World Haemophilia Federation.
The names of Ms Rosemary Daly, the IHS administrator, and Ms Margaret King, a recently-retired nurse and counsellor with the society, have also taken on legendary status in recent weeks.
They nursed to the end more than 40 of the 74 people who died; remaining with the families as death drew near, their labour, their cheerful demeanour and their competence a reassurance that loved ones could die in dignity at home and not be reduced in death to an untouchable in a body bag.
"We never let the undertakers touch the body," Ms Daly said. "Some would look at us very strangely because we will wash, dress and coffin them ourselves. The undertakers will do everything, give us everything, but they will not touch the body. Except for one, to whom we've taken bodies released by hospitals in body bags, and who has allowed us to take them out and dress them."
Ms King taught her everything she knows, Ms Daly says. "I remember the first time we went into a home where someone was dying, and she said `Here's a shirt. Help me with this'. Before that, I wouldn't have walked into a room which contained a dead person."
Ms Daly (43) is an ebullient, straight-talking and notably modest woman, fearful of being portrayed as some kind of saint. Born in Dundalk, she came into the IHS 10 years ago after a series of jobs involving office work, youth work in Darndale in north Dublin, and voluntary work with the Gay Health Action group. Through these, she was drawn to her present job. "I suppose I became obsessed with marginalisation and the whole AIDS issue."
A mother of two, with a "very supportive" husband, she says that the hardest thing is watching mothers burying their sons.