In another context, it could be seen as comical: a "dead man" walking into the Lindsay tribunal yesterday.
But there was little to laugh about Mr Edward Ryan's surprise appearance, or rather, the Irish Blood Transfusion Service's false belief that he had passed away.
Mr Ryan (71) was first employed by the Blood Transfusion Service Board (as the IBTS was known) in 1969, and retired in 1988 after 14 years' service as accounting and personnel officer.
Given that he has been receiving a pension from the IBTS since then, it is hard to understand how the agency came to believe Mr Ryan was deceased. Even more puzzling is its decision to relay this belief to the tribunal as fact "emphatically" and on different occasions, as counsel for the Irish Haemophilia Society, Mr Martin Hayden, said.
There is no evidence to suggest the IBTS sought to mislead the tribunal. However, on the face of it, the agency seemed to have made little effort to ascertain either Mr Ryan's whereabouts or the truthfulness of its assertion that he was dead.
Speaking to The Irish Times yesterday, Mr Ryan said he was "surprised" about the agency's lack of knowledge as "you would have thought I would have shown up in the books".
Ironically Mr Ryan rather than the IBTS initiated contact after reading newspaper reports of the evidence of Mr John McStay, an insolvency expert employed by the blood bank to examine its accounts in the period 1970-1990.
Whether or not his evidence will prove significant, however, the fact that Mr Ryan is available to give evidence raises embarrassing questions for the IBTS.
It had engaged Mr McStay's services on the basis that there were no former employees of the board available to give evidence on financial matters.
The IHS had argued strongly that Mr McStay's evidence should be heard after all factual witnesses had taken the stand to avoid prejudicing any future evidence. And the society's fears seemed to have been borne out to some extent as Mr Ryan has informed the tribunal that he has read Mr McStay's report and agreed with its conclusions.
The report blamed Department of Health funding structures for many of the board's problems and played down the importance of the board's profits on commercial concentrates as a factor in the selection of products.
Mr Ryan will begin giving evidence today, and among the issues he will be questioned on will be the BTSB's investigations into Accu-Science, a company founded by the board's former senior technical officer, the late Mr Sean Hanratty, which supplied Cutter blood products to the board.
The tribunal heard for the first time yesterday that a "preliminary" examination of the issue was carried out by Mr Ryan who, according to Mr Hayden, was critical of "quite a few" matters in the context of the Companies Act, 1983.
The evidence suggests that concern was being expressed within the board about Mr Hanratty's shareholding in the company some years before December 1990, when Mr Pat Rabbitte TD alleged in a press statement that there was a serious conflict of interest. Mr Rabbitte's intervention led to a formal investigation of Mr Hanratty by the former chief executive officer, Mr Ted Keyes.
In evidence to the tribunal yesterday Dr Paule Cotter, a Cork-based treating doctor, said she was unaware of Mr Hanratty's connection with Accu-Science in late 1983 when she made a recommendation with other treaters on the products they wished to see supplied by the board the following year.