It was the day Judge Brian Curtin finally called halt, writes Mark Hennessy, Political Correspondent
For more than two years, Brian Curtin's legal team has battled to stop the Oireachtas from launching an impeachment inquiry, following allegations that he had viewed child pornography.
Yesterday, the fight ended, perhaps surprisingly quickly.
Meeting in Leinster House shortly after 10am, his leading barrister, former attorney general John Rogers, made one last attempt to halt the inquiry for a time.
The judge had "recently" been diagnosed with "organic brain damage" that leaves him frequently confused about his location, and affected by short-term memory lapses.
However the committee, headed by Cork South West TD Denis O'Donovan refused his demand that it should produce an interim report - outlining this new medical evidence to the full Oireachtas.
Thus rebuffed, Mr Rogers sought an adjournment and then returned to announce that Brian Curtin would be submitting his resignation to the Government immediately.
The letter, "final and irrevocable", finally went in yesterday afternoon at 3.30pm to the secretary to the Government, Dermot McCarthy, coming to the attention of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern moments later.
Throughout, the Oireachtas inquiry, headed by O'Donovan, has acted slowly, deliberately, carefully as it trod through a legal minefield, establishing some important legal precedents along the way.
However, Mr Curtin, who earned €153,000 as a member of the Circuit Court bench, always had the ability to be able to stop it in its tracks, simply by submitting his resignation.
On November 1st, 2001, his life looked so different. He had just been appointed to the Circuit Court bench. Life was good. Unknown to him, however, his life was soon to come under the microscope.
On May 27th, 2002, detectives following up on US "leads" that Irish people had been viewing Texas-based child porn websites raided his Tralee home, seizing his computers and other records.
In April 2004 his trial sensationally collapsed after it emerged that the search warrant was a day out of date, and, therefore, invalid. The charges were dismissed.
Mr Justice Carroll Moran was scathing of the prosecution. The Director of Public Prosecutions had known that the warrant was out of date for months before the trial but still proceeded with the cases. His duties as a member of the bench, said Mr Justice Moran, obliged him to give no favour to a fellow judge, but neither could he treat him worse: "For me to do so would be grotesque," he said.
The public outcry meant the situation could not rest there.
In May 2004, the Government moved a motion to impeach him under Article 35.4.1 of the Constitution, alleging he was "unsuitable to exercise the office of a judge of the Circuit Court".
Guided by the shrewd and experienced Kerry solicitor, Robert Pierse, Mr Curtin quickly moved to block the inquiry, eventually taking the matter to the Supreme Court.
Here, however, the Oireachtas had a good day. The seven judges in March this year dismissed his action on all grounds, and ruled that the Oireachtas could demand that he hand over his computer.
However, it did rule that the Dáil and Seanad would have to sit separately to hear the case against him, and would then have to meet again if they found against him to decide if his offence merited dismissal.
The committee had recruited expert witnesses from home and abroad, including one, the United Kingdom-based Martin Gibbs, who examined the contents of Mr Curtin's computer. Detectives had alleged that images of child pornography were stored in it.
However, the committee has never seen Mr Gibbs' report, after it decided not to view any material until full hearings began.
Now they will never do so.
Mr Curtin's resignation, though it saves him from the threat of impeachment, means that his standard of living will fall sharply. Instead of a €153,000-a-year, salary he will be able to draw a pension of €19,149 per year and a €51,000 lump sum.
In theory, he has not yet received that, but the Department of Justice effectively conceded that he would get it - regardless of any public hue and cry that may now ensue.
"This is a statutory entitlement to which he or she is objectively entitled and there is no provision for this pension to be refused once the infirmity is established," said Minister for Justice Michael McDowell. But he must first establish that he is resigning because of ill health. Few of those associated with the case doubt his assertions.
Even fewer believe that a Department of Justice medical examiner would deny him. His decision to quit yesterday will be analysed for months to come.
Had he finally accepted that he had tried and failed to stop the committee's work getting under way during the lifetime of this Dáil? Under the rules, it would have had to begin again from scratch if the investigation had not concluded before the next general election, though the legal precedents established would have remained.
Or was the ambition always to get beyond the five-year threshold? If he had quit before November 1st he would have been able to qualify for a preserved pension in a decade's time, but nothing for now. This way he gets something.