The Lindsay tribunal is due to hear evidence this week from a former accountant with the Blood Transfusion Service Board. The tribunal had been mistakenly told earlier that the accountant was deceased.
Mr Eddie Ryan, who retired from the BTSB in the late 1980s dealt with accounts in the organisation for up to 20 years.
When the board's chief medical witness, Dr Emer Lawlor, gave evidence last July, she was asked if she was in a position to say if Mr Ryan was still available to give evidence. She said: "He is deceased."
She said she could not give evidence on the board's financial affairs and the BTSB hired Mr John McStay, an accountant and insolvency expert, to give evidence on its behalf. Having studied the accounts of the BTSB, he gave evidence in Sept ember.
Mr Ryan will be a crucial witness, especially in relation to decisions taken by the board in the late 1970s and early 1980s when its financial position, in the words of Mr McStay, was "disastrous".
The tribunal is investigating the infection of some 220 haemophiliacs in the State with HIV and hepatitis C from contaminated blood products in the 1970s and 1980s.