Judge Alison Lindsay's decision yesterday to rule against a broadening of the tribunal's investigations was expected. But, for the Irish Haemophilia Society, that didn't make it any easier to take.
As the society and its members see it, the agents who arguably had most to do with the infection of more than 250 haemophiliacs with HIV and hepatitis C are getting off scot-free.
The pharmaceutical companies that supplied infected blood products to the State will not be examined - despite the fact that their products were responsible, it is believed, for all but seven of 105 HIV cases and the majority of hepatitis C transmission.
Listening to the chairwoman delivering her ruling to the tribunal, the small group of IHS members who attended the public hearings for the past 14 months seemed shaken and numb.
The ruling's emphatic nature leaves little room for a High Court appeal, although one is being considered.
The only other option seems to be to persuade the Oireachtas to approve supplementary terms of reference that compel the tribunal to investigate the drugs firms - a difficult, if not hopeless, task.
The Government has come under pressure before to amend the terms of reference of sitting tribunals (e.g. to expand the Moriarty tribunal to include an inquiry into the controversial sale of Glen Ding Woods, Co Wicklow) and it has resisted such moves at every turn.
Adding new terms to existing ones could require the recall of previous witnesses and, unless they were extremely tightly worded, spell an effective restarting of the tribunal, which has cost in excess of £6 million in administrative and legal fees to date.
The chairwoman will undoubtedly come in for some criticism for her decision. Whatever one's interpretation of the terms of reference, it was clear she had the power to broaden the inquiry if she felt it was "relevant".
That she has not found it so will add fuel to strongly held feelings that the tribunal has conducted its business in a more timid manner than other public inquiries.
But if blame is to be apportioned for giving the drugs companies what could be described as an amnesty, it must go in the first instance to the Government for deliberately excluding them from the terms of reference.
The terms were formulated during 18 months of negotiations between the Department of Health and Children and the IHS, whose dissatisfaction at the terms of the Finlay tribunal led to the society's withdrawal from that inquiry and the establishment of this one.
For the IHS, there was a sense of deja vu to the negotiations, as it felt the Government's primary aim was simply to narrow the scope of the inquiry as far as possible.
Nonetheless, the society was satisfied with the terms when they were finally published in June, 1999, and felt confident they provided an opportunity to examine the pharmaceutical companies if necessary.
It was bolstered in this belief by assurances from the then minister, Mr Cowen, that the tribunal would leave no stone unturned. In a letter to the society in 1998, which was alluded to in support of the IHS's application last week, Mr Cowen said the tribunal would investigate the source of infections arising from products either made by the Blood Transfusion Service Board or imported from abroad.
It is not clear whether the minister meant this as a guarantee, but haemophiliacs could be forgiven for thinking it as such.
After enduring years of indifference and dishonesty towards their plight, they must now come to terms with what they regard as yet another broken promise.